Political Quotes

“as my colleague from Kansas said, I also came to the floor today to talk about the unnecessary government shutdown that is continuing and is having widespread ramifications in New Hampshire and across the country. I would like to respond to some of what he said about the Budget Control Act and about the current state of the deficit. The fact is the deficit, under this President, has been reduced by more than 50 percent since he took office. It is on course to reach a little over 4 percent of GDP by the end of 2015, I believe. By 2023 it is expected to get even lower--down to a little over 2 percent. There is no doubt that we need a plan to deal with the long-term debt and deficits of this country. Most of us who supported the Budget Control Act thought that was what we had done. We put a committee in place that was actually going to come up with an agreement on how we could get to a long-term plan to deal with this country's debt and deficits. It is really unfortunate that some of the people who were appointed to that committee didn't share in that commitment. I think it is important to remind us all where we are. We have made significant improvements on reducing the deficit in this country. We have been willing to look at a long-term agreement to deal with the debt and deficit, and I think that is what we ought to do. I would hope that as the result of this government shutdown, we can get some agreement from both sides of the aisle to actually do this.…”