Political Quotes

“It was the basic principle that George Washington laid out in his farewell address, that every generation should take care of the responsibilities of that generation, rather than pass it on to their child. It is a 200-year-old concept. It is fairly straightforward. What is interesting to me is I have been in a personal conversation with our current President of the United States about debt and about balancing the budget. The conversation back and forth was circled around a simple principle: Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two decades ago, made it their crowning achievement that they balanced the budget in a bipartisan time period. My request to this President was: Can we agree that we should set a goal to balance the budget? His response to me was: No. Twenty years ago, that was a good idea, but now, the perception is that we should have sustainable deficits, that is, balance everything except for interest. This year, our interest payment is $233 billion. CBO forecasts that 10 years from now, our interest payment--single-year, one-year interest payment 10 years from now will be $880 billion. We must get us back to balance, and when I say balance, I mean real balance. Families balance their budget. Businesses balance their budget. States balance their budget. We see times in our past when we had a balanced budget and saw the economic activity from that; but for whatever reason, now, we are just going to ignore that. Why?…”