Political Quotes

“I want to address this body and talk about an issue that we do not talk about enough--the deficit. It is an issue that, for whatever reason, we have stopped talking about in Washington, DC. We talk about tax policy, which we should. We talk about disaster relief areas, which we should. We talk about healthcare policy, which we should, and a lot of other things. We have stopped talking about the debt and deficit, and I think that is a mistake for us. You see, after 2011, the trend moved from a high point. Deficit spending that year was $1.3 trillion--overspending in a single year. After that point, the deficit went down a little bit each year until 2015. In 2016 our deficit number--that is a single year of overspending--started going back up. It went up in 2016, and it went up again in 2017. It is turning in the wrong direction. As you will recall and as many people in this body will recall, deficits were a major topic for us starting in 2010. Each year, Congress was trying to find ways to be able to reduce the deficit. That does not seem to be the issue anymore. What I bring is a set of solutions and a set of ideas. How do we get out of this? Are there bipartisan solutions to actually deal with deficit overspending? There are priority things that we need to spend money on, and we should spend money on those things.…”