Political Quotes

“Any amendment we offered to increase spending, we had some unique thing in this modern Republican world. What was so unique? We had an offset for it. We found savings someplace else in this massive budget to pay for what we wanted. Remember, during the last 3 years Bill Clinton was President, we spent less money than we brought in. We brought down the national debt by a half a trillion dollars. But not this Republican Congress and this Republican President. Now it is red ink as far as one can see. Instead of real fiscal discipline, all the majority has given us is gimmicks that actually make the problem worse. They purport to offset the cost of the tax cuts for capital gains and dividends. But as reported in the Washington Post yesterday, these offsets are nothing but cheap tricks. One measure would allow upper income savers with a traditional individual retirement account to pay taxes on the account's investment gains and then roll over some of the balance into a Roth IRA, where the money can be withdrawn tax-free upon retirement. The provision would raise about $6.4 billion over 10 years, seemingly keeping the size of the tax-cutting package down. But over the next 35 years, it would cost the [federal] government $36 billion, according to the Urban Institute. Think about that. A gimmick to let people think that this was a good thing for the American people because it was raising revenue. It was only about $30 billion short.…”