Political Quotes

“Madam President, I would recommend to this body something that is obvious to all of us. Our economy is stuck. We are in a bad spot of just treading water. Over the last 11 years, our gross domestic product--that is how much our economy is growing--has been 1.9 percent, and 1.9 percent is a tiny change. Just to give you a perspective, over the last 100 years, there has not been a single decade when we have not had a year without at least 3 percent growth, until the last decade. Literally, our economy, is typically growing; that is, more jobs are being added, people are making more money, there is more happening, and we are selling more internationally. In America, over the last 100 years, it has just slowly grown and grown and grown until the last 10 years, and, then, it has flattened out. We are stuck. Now, when I was younger, we had a record player in the house. Now, for all of you under 40, I would explain that a record player is kind of like a CD player, only it was larger and made of vinyl. But if I say that, then, all the under-20 crowd will say: What is a CD player? Let me just say this. The big black pieces of vinyl that played music at my house occasionally would get stuck. The record needle would land in the same groove and play the same part of the song over and over. It was my job, as the youngest one in the house, to go over to the record and bump it and get it out of that. Our economy needs that.…”