Political Quotes

On the recordMay 4, 2011
Madam President, I thank my colleague from Texas. He is absolutely right. When we look at the budget deficit and the debt and the impact it is having on our economy today, it is clear we need constraints. Forty-nine States have a balanced budget requirement. When I am back home talking with people in our cities and counties, in their struggles with balancing their own budgets, they ask me: How can Washington continue to spend so much money it does not have? Forty cents of every dollar Washington spends today is borrowed money. Clearly that restraint is needed. It is important to get the economy back on track. Often we talk about the record budget deficit and the $14 trillion debt in terms of its impact on future generations. As the father of three, I am very concerned about that, as we all should be, because we are mortgaging their future, the excessive spending today that they are going to have to pay back. It is not just what is going to happen in the future. Our deficits and debts have gotten so big that there is an impact on the economy. There was a study done recently by a couple of respected economists-- Rogoff and Reinhart--which says, in looking around the world, where a country's debt is up to 90 percent of its total economy, you have about a 1-percent decline in the GDP or the growth in the economy. Our growth was only 1.8 percent last quarter.…
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Rob Portman
Republican · Ohio

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