Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I would say we are expecting the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd, to arrive shortly, and when he does, I will yield to him. I wish to also respond, briefly, to the Senator from New Hampshire and start by talking about where we agree. I think it is almost always good, when discussing something, for people to look at where there is agreement. Where there is agreement, it builds trust and understanding and, therefore, when possible, there can be even greater agreement. We, clearly, agree it is unhealthy for the government to be running these huge deficits. I think everyone in this body agrees on that point. It is unsustainable, as many have said. But why are we running these big deficits? We are doing so, frankly, because of mistakes made during the financial crisis prompted by the subprime mortgage crisis and also because we have been in a fairly deep recession. That is why these deficits are so large. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. It was something, unfortunately, that had to be done. We had to come up with some money to help provide some economic stability for this country. After that, as we know, when we are in a recession, unemployment payments are higher and Medicaid payments are higher and a lot of other programs are automatically higher because we enact programs on top of that to help the economy. That is why we are facing these huge deficits. They have grown very significantly in the last several years for those reasons.…”