Political Quotes

“I do want to thank Mr. Ryan for his leadership on this budget. Mr. Chairman, we've talked a lot about the big picture. I want to make it personal. In the early 1990s, I lost my job in a corporate merger. For about 48 hours, I moped around, feeling sorry for myself; but then, one morning, my wife and I got up. We made a pot of coffee, and we got out a sheet of notebook paper, and right down the middle of the page we drew a line. On one side, we wrote down: this is what we have coming in. On the other side, we wrote down: this is how we're going to spend it. We shed some tears that morning as we made difficult decisions. The reason I tell that very personal story is that there is no question in my mind that, today, there are Americans sitting at their kitchen tables--with that same piece of paper, shedding those same tears. Before I got here, I served in the State senate. I chaired the Appropriations Committee, and I worked with the Democrat chairman in the State house as we made difficult decisions in balancing our State budget. Families, State legislatures, small businesses around this Nation are making those difficult decisions. They have every reason to expect their policymakers in Washington to do the same thing. I support this budget proposal because it does make tough decisions and balances our budget.…”