Political Quotes

“Speaker Hastert, today marked the 1,355th day that you have been Speaker of the House. During that time, in particular, in the past 1 year, while the Republicans have had a majority in the House, my colleagues will recall a year ago, they had a Republican majority in the Senate, and they passed their tax breaks, they passed their budget. They got their spending, they got their taxes. They increased spending by 16 percent and they cut taxes by 8 percent. So in one year, they have now added $440,605,894,921 to the national debt. Those of us who have studied American history will be quick to note that from the day that George Washington became President almost until the beginning of World War II, our Nation did not acquire that much debt in well over 150 years. The Republican Congress, in one year, has increased the debt by that much. One would think that their response to that would be some shame because, after all, all they are doing is sticking our kids with their bills. That is what they did today. They passed a bill to say that some kids can inherit unlimited amounts of money and not pay a penny's worth of tax on it. For those of us who are self-employed as a welder, a logger or a shrimper like some of my friends back home, they pay the employer's share of Social Security, they pay the employee's share of Social Security, so right off the bat they are paying about 18 percent of taxes. Plus they are paying income tax on that.”