Rob Andrews: “If the Treasury had a dollar for every time someone says they want to cut the deficit, we wouldn't have one. So let's…”

“If the Treasury had a dollar for every time someone says they want to cut the deficit, we wouldn't have one. So let's stop talking about cutting the deficit and talk about how we can cut the deficit. Let's let Medicare negotiate the price of prescription drugs, rather than pay whatever the drug companies demand, and save $300 billion over 10 years. Let's stop occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and paying their bills, to the tune of $110 billion a year, and bring the troops home. Let's stop giving $80 billion in tax breaks to the oil companies that made record profits last year. Let's require people who make more than $1 million a year to pay just a little bit more to help reduce this problem. And let's have sensible reductions in other departments of government. This is not a time for us to be providing cover to a political party. It is a time for us to cover the obligations to our seniors, not by abolishing Medicare but by improving it, to cover obligations to our veterans, and cover obligations to the country. We will come back in a couple of weeks and do what we should be doing tonight, which is to raise this debt ceiling and protect this country.”