Political Quotes

“debt is front and center in the national conversation again. That is entirely reasonable. We have a debt ceiling conversation right now about America taking care of our debts and our responsibilities, which we are a responsible nation, and we are going to do. But we should also have a grownup conversation about our spending to say: Are we spending on our priorities? Because when you have $31 trillion--actually, scratch that--$31.4 trillion because $400 billion is not a rounding error--$31.4 trillion in total national debt, we should pay attention to this, especially when we are currently adding $1 trillion in new debt every single year, and it continues to accelerate. Recently, someone asked me: When does it get hard? When do we pass the point? And I actually had to painfully say to them: 10 years ago because in the last 10 years, our debt has continued to accelerate like a rock rolling downhill, and it is going to be harder and harder to be able to manage this. At some point, we have got to be able to stop and say: Inflation is going up; challenges that are in our economy are increasing; we are spending almost as much on interest as we are on defense. At what point do we stop and say: We have got to be able to fix this? Well, I have a perspective. The first step on actually talking about debt and deficit is actually taking it seriously and saying: What are we spending on that is a priority, and what are we spending on that is not a priority?…”