Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator from New Hampshire and the Chair. Mr. President, this debate is about the economic future of the country. This is the headline in Newsweek magazine from December 7, 2009: ``How great powers fall. Steep debt, slow growth, and high spending kill empires--and America could be next.'' If you go to the inside of the story, it reads: This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy and Air Force. . . . If the United States doesn't come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that the debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power. That is what this debate is about. We are on a course that is totally unsustainable. We are headed for a debt of 400 percent of the gross domestic product in 50 years. That is the estimate of the Congressional Budget Office and others who have looked at it, including the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Management and Budget. All of them have warned that we are on an utterly unsustainable course. The National Journal, in an article on November 7 last year, said: The debt problem is worse than you think. In the article, they said: Simply put, even alarmists may be underestimating the size of the (debt) problem, how quickly it will become unbearable, and how poorly prepared our political system is to deal with it.…”