Political Quotes

“That is right. I think the Republican vision, I think Congress' vision for where we need to go with the budget is more than a surplus budget. For all we know the Soviet Union ran surplus budgets. I do not know what their budget was, but our vision is to get to a surplus budget, but a surplus budget that can be funded by a one-wage-earner family and not a requirement that we need two wage earners in the family to support this government and this bureaucracy in Washington. I think another key debate that we have as we work toward getting to a surplus budget is the whole question of whether new spending equals new tax burdens. One of the major things that we see in the budget that the President has presented to us, and that the gentleman and I are concerned about when we take a look at this budget, under the best of circumstances, the most optimistic economic assumptions, we believe that this budget barely comes into a surplus mode. But under a more realistic assumption, the most likely set of assumptions, this budget is still going to be $70 billion in the red in the year 2002. One of the primary reasons that this is happening is that this President has decided to move more power to this town by significant new increases in the number of programs that we have.”