Political Quotes

“In regard to the comments made by my friend the Republican leader, as I listened to him, I picked up about three or four points that I think are fairly obvious. One is, do not touch the tax cuts for the rich; No. 2, do not touch the tax cuts for the rich; and No. 3 is that they want to go after entitlements. The largest, of course, are Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. We know the Ryan budget calls for privatizing Medicare. Even the Republican majority leader today is quoted in the papers as saying that we are going to have to back off that. I am paraphrasing that, but everyone can read it. It is on the front page of the Washington Post newspaper. But the Ryan budget has a number of ways of saving money. The most significant way of saving money is to destroy Medicare. The fourth point, after recognizing that, as my friend the Republican leader said, we need to go after entitlements, is, don't tax the rich. We on this side of the aisle realize we have some problems with spending and we have to do something about it. The problem is not as much about spending as it is about deficits. What are we going to do about these deficits that accumulate every year? Well, we have some experience from recent years on how to handle that. During the last 4 years of the Clinton administration, we were spending less money than we were bringing in. We were retiring the national debt.…”