Political Quotes

“Now, let me speak to the issue I came here to speak about, which is the deficit. Speaker Boehner was in my hometown of New York City last night, and he talked about how important it is to get a handle on this deficit. On that issue, my colleagues on this side of the aisle and I certainly have no problem. Neither does President Obama. The President has proposed $4 trillion in cuts--a huge amount of cutting, $4 trillion--to close the deficit both on the spending side and the tax side. So anyone who thinks one side wants to cut the deficit and the other does not has not looked at the facts. But, obviously, we have to come together. If each side sticks to its own position, nothing will happen. There should be one obvious place where Speaker Boehner and his colleagues can show some goodwill; that is, on these subsidies to big oil. No one can defend them--no one. Oil companies are making record profits. Gas prices are at an all-time or close to an all-time high, and we, the taxpayers, are continuing to subsidize the five big oil companies. You could not write a more ridiculous scenario. Senator Menendez, along with Senators Brown and McCaskill, later today will introduce legislation that our side agrees with, which will say take all that money and put it to deficit reduction. There are some who would have preferred to put the money into encouraging independence from particularly foreign oil.…”