Political Quotes

“earlier this year, Congress created a bipartisan committee--eight Republicans, eight Democrats, half from the House, half from the Senate. Their mission was to reform the budget process. It was an acknowledgement that our debt is climbing, and there is no structure in place to even address that debt, and any time our debt is addressed, it seems to be somewhat haphazard or accidental or some ad hoc committee is formed to go after debt every 10 years or so. This is spiraling, and we need to have something done, and it needs to be built into the structure. Starting in April, these 16 Members of Congress started to meet, with these instructions: ``to significantly reform the budget and appropriations process''--significantly reform the process. The idea was simple. We are getting a bad budget product; we probably need to look at the budget process and be able to find out what is happening with the process. You see, this process that we have was started in 1974. Right after Watergate, Congress created this new process with a budget, with a President's budget, with authorizing bills, with appropriating bills, and they would all work together for great transparency. It was a great plan on paper, but since 1974, it has worked only four times--four times. Year after year, Americans keep saying the same thing: Why isn't the budget working again? Why is everything climbing?…”