Political Quotes

“tonight I come to the floor to celebrate the accomplishments that this House, in a bipartisan way, working along with the other body and working with the President, have accomplished really working over a period of the last 6 months, but really beginning the dialog after the last election, recognizing that we wanted to work together, that we wanted to make progress, that we wanted to address some major problems facing this country, and that we also wanted to get the deficit under control. Today we passed the second piece of our major legislative package, the tax portion, which, combined with the spending portion, has moved us now, hopefully, the final steps towards getting to a surplus budget when the numbers come out. In the middle of August, I think we will see good news that the deficit for 1997 is going to be somewhere less than $50 billion, which is still a very large number. As we start taking the look out at where we are going to be in 1998, the real possibility that we will move to a surplus budget in 1998, maybe 1999, but perhaps much sooner than the year 2002, which the bipartisan agreement set as its outside target.”