Political Quotes

“It does not. But it is interesting to note that the President's deficit commission was set up by the President and had six of his nominees on it. It had six Republicans and six Democrats. Five of the six Presidential nominees he nominated agreed with the deficit commission, three of the six Republicans agreed, and three of the Democrats--a pretty good meeting in the middle. Yet the President did not embrace the results of his own commission, did not embrace the results of the people he appointed. So what was the purpose of that exercise? Was it to make political hay or was it to solve the problems? The fact is, I have five colleagues in the Senate who have been working hard on that over the past 5 months to try to build a bipartisan agreement out of the basis of that. That is what has to happen--except politics. I go back and just refer to my colleague, if you look at the history of republics, the track record is not very good. The average age of the world's republics is 207 years. That is our average age. We are 27 years past the average. The question is, Can we cheat history? Can we not fall like the rest of the republics over the very same things? They all fell over fiscal issues. They let their spending get out of control, they let their debt get out of control, and then they could not afford the promises they made. I will say to my colleague, this is not an issue of the budget chairman. This is an issue of the leadership of the Senate that does not want a budget.…”