Political Quotes

“I just listened to my colleague from Michigan talking about the need to reopen the government and the need to deal with the debt. Of course, I agree with that, as do my colleagues on this side of the aisle. We also heard discussion about the fact that we should not be manufacturing crises. Unfortunately, we have a crisis on our hands; that is, the crisis of debt at record levels, so I wish to talk about that a little today and talk about why this discussion is so important, particularly on extending the debt limit because that would be the place naturally for us to deal with the problem that faces this generation and certainly future generations reaching this historic level of debt. In a matter of days, we are told, our Nation is going to be reaching this debt limit which is $16.7 trillion. Think about that. That is sixteen thousand billion dollars. It is impossible to comprehend that number, but let's try: $16.7 trillion would produce a stack of $1 bills 1 million miles high. That is enough, by the way, to go to the Moon and back. It is now bigger, by the way, than our entire economy. Only once in our history have we had debt as a percent of our economy so large and that was after World War II. We were able quickly to address that. We didn't have the long-term liabilities we have now, and we had very high defense spending from World War II we were able to reduce. But other than that, we have never been here before. I would say we are in uncharted territory.…”