Erskine Bowles

It will destroy this country from within.

You attract more bees with honey.

[W]e must invest in education, infrastructure, and high-value research and development to help our economy grow, keep us globally competitive, and make it easier for businesses to create jobs.

As a matter of good social policy, these programs deserve to be reformed.

It is an enormous fiscal cancer, and going forward it will only get worse.

Our problem is spending, and it is all spending, so each side of the aisle needs to understand that some of the things they love dearly are subject to some cuts.

The longer that we kick the can down the road, the worse the situation is going to get.

Failure to reach our target will lock us into mandatory indiscriminate cuts and will limit our options in the future.

A balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction that keeps everything on the table is the only way that we are going to be able to address the deficit.

What most folks saw was Washington at its worst: too much politics and very little in the way of responsible decision making.

I could support raising the eligibility age for Medicare since we have other coverage available through the Affordable Health Care Act.

It is just spending by another name.

Cut and invest to promote economic growth and keep America competitive. We should cut redtape and unproductive government spending that hinders job creation and growth.

The era of deficit denial is over.

Cut and invest to promote economic growth and keep America competitive. We should cut red tape in unproductive government spending that hinders job creation and growth. But at the same time, we must invest in education, infrastructure, and…

The budget goes nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare.

I do not believe that people in my income bracket needed a tax cut.

We can either take the ostrich theory and put our heads in the sand, or we can decide we are going to step up and do something about.

If you are really concerned about jobs, then we have to tackle this fiscal problem at home.

We have this treaty where we are supposed to support Taiwan. The only problem is we would have to borrow the money from China in order to do it.

Absolutely, unequivocally, yes.

But if we only do Social Security, we have not come close to solving the problem.

It is only desperate if we do not act. If we do act, the future of this country is so bright, I cannot believe it.

This debt and these deficits that we are incurring on an annual basis are like a cancer.