Political Quotes

“The great concern I have--and the Senator from Illinois has been a great ally on the Senate Budget Committee. We have been two who have tried to push for reduced deficits in the period that we have served on that committee together. I just say to him, one of the great concerns I have is what appears to be reasonable on its face, when turned into what we deal with in the budget process, becomes quite different, and that is when you rely on estimates there is so much room for monkey business. And we have experienced it. With Gramm-Rudman, every year--every year--they would send us a budget that was a total fiction because we knew the estimates that were behind the numbers were false. We knew that they were ``Rosie Scenario'' with respect to interest rates, with respect to economic growth, with respect to unemployment. So what appeared to be something that was in compliance was, in fact, an absolute fiction and did nothing more than mislead the American people that somehow we were on a course that was going to deliver deficit reduction, and instead resulted in dramatic increases in the deficits. I am very worried that we have the same prospect here. We talk about the debt limit. Let me just say that with respect to the debt limit, when you get to the crunch, the question then becomes to every Member in this body, are you going to shut down the Federal Government?…”