Political Quotes

“Those of you of my Republican friends, and I do consider you my friends, who ran on the basis of a balanced budget, if you vote for this budget, you lied. Two years ago you came to the floor and said there was a surplus. We owed the Social Security trust fund over $1 trillion at that time. We owed our own Federal Government employees' retirement system over $500 billion at that time. We owed the Medicare trust fund over $200 billion at that time. And with a perfectly straight face you looked the American people in the eye and you talked about surpluses as far as the eye could see, and it was all a lie. I regret that I did not say it sooner. So tonight I am going to give you one last chance to do the right thing. The guy sitting over there, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), when he was just a Member he used to come to the floor and wax eloquently on the need for a balanced budget amendment. You have been Speaker now for 1,550 days, plus or minus; and yet you have never scheduled a vote on a balanced budget amendment, because you know it gets in the way of your tax cuts. We are voting tonight to add another $800 billion, that is a thousand times a thousand times a thousand times a thousand times 800, in new debt in just 1 year, because you know your budget plan does not work.”