Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the floor directly from a hearing of the Committee on Finance at which the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, our former colleague from the House, the very able Leon Panetta, presented the President's budget in terms that were, for this Senator, striking and strikingly reassuring. May I say, sir, that from the early 1980's, I found myself often on the floor of the Senate, sometimes in print, saying that in the White House and in the Office of Management and Budget a huge gamble was being made, that a crisis could be created by bringing about a deficit that would force the Congress to cut back certain domestic programs. The question of how I knew need not be discussed here. But may I say that the person principally involved, Mr. David Stockman, subsequently wrote a memoir of his time in Washington called 'The Triumph of Politics,' in which he described in detail what happened and how it had gone wrong.”