Political Quotes

“Madam President, since I joined the Senate almost 12 years ago, I have worked to ensure that Congress deals with our country's unsustainable national debt and budgets that are not balanced as far as the eye can see; to do this, we must undertake tax, entitlement and spending reform. As most of my colleagues know, since 2006, I worked conscientiously to create a commission that would undertake this task. My partner in the House was Congressman Frank Wolf, and we introduced legislation we called Saving America's Future Economy, SAFE, which got 118 House co-sponsors. In the 111th Congress, Joe Lieberman and I introduced the Senate bill and were gathering co- sponsors, then later combined our efforts with Senators Conrad and Gregg, chair and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, to introduce a similar debt and deficit commission bill, which eventually did receive a vote in the Senate. The Conrad-Gregg bill stipulated that if its commission's recommendations were supported by 14 of its 18 members, it would be fast-tracked for an up-or-down vote in both the House and Senate. One of my biggest disappointments in the Senate is that the Conrad-Gregg bill failed. I believe the reasons for that failure are already known by my colleagues, so I won't revisit that vote. And in any event, as I look back, even if it had passed the Senate, I am not so sure it would have passed the House because many in the Democratic leadership opposed it.…”