Political Quotes

“the bill now before the Senate provides $365 billion in new spending reported by the Appropriations Committee and $522 billion in tax and mandatory spending measures recommended by the Finance Committee. The bill as a whole has a price tag of $887 billion. When the borrowing costs associated with this spending are included, the cost of the package rises well over $1.2 trillion. The President has suggested that even more measures such as this, other requests to stimulate the financial system, may be needed to resuscitate the housing market and reform financial regulatory institutions. We don't know what the cost of all of these measures will be, but it sounds as if we may be asked to enlarge these commitments even further as time goes by. Proponents of this bill say that the fiscal cost of inaction is also substantial. They argue that failure to enact the bill will lead to lower growth and diminished tax receipts. Yet there is little documentation to back up that claim. Those suggestions have not been described in any detail by administration officials or their economic experts. In size alone, this measure has few precedents. We are considering this bill in the absence of any formal request or documentation from the executive branch. This bill has been described as President Obama's recovery plan. Yet we have not had an official request from the administration for these funds.”