Political Quotes

“I would like to comment this morning on an issue that I think is important to us and to this country, and that is the balanced budget amendment. Although we have been discussing over the past several days the unfunded mandates bill, the question of a balanced budget has come up. There is a relationship, and I understand the relationship. Certainly, if I were a local government official and we were talking about a balanced budget amendment I would want the protection of an unfunded mandate bill so that the Federal Government would not shift the responsibility of payment to local government. But the balanced budget amendment goes beyond that, it seems to me. It is one of the fundamental changes that needs to take place in the Federal Government so that decisions in the future will be different. If we are really talking about change, some of the procedural changes that are being discussed now need to happen and they need to happen soon. We have already done the accountability of the Congress. That is excellent. There is no reason why the people here should not live under the same rules that they apply to others. We need a balanced budget amendment to give us some discipline for fiscal responsibility. We need to do that. We need to have a line-item veto.”