Political Quotes

“I am taken aback by the chairman's remarks. We now sit at $13 trillion worth of debt, we have 10 percent unemployment, we are 4 years away from being Greece, and we are going to do what we have always done. The reason we can freeze Federal pay is because there is absolutely no inflation in this country. So instead of giving the raise, we don't. Every private sector business out there today is getting extremely more with less--to the tune that the productivity in the private sector was up 6.8 percent. If we had that same productivity in the Federal Government, we could lose 150,000 employees and do the same thing. But we would not accept what is necessary--the necessary pain--to protect this country for its future. The chairman mentioned unobligated balances, but he spoke about obligated balances. We are not talking about money that has been obligated; we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that is not obligated. Last year, at the end of the fiscal year, there was in excess of $700 billion from the previous year that was unobligated, sitting there. So it is about managing our money properly. That is like saying if you have $30,000 in a savings account and you want to buy a new home, you are going to leave it there and go borrow $60,000. No, you are going to use part of that to buy your new home. So we have the same approach that is disgusting America: We can't, we can't. What we can do is borrow against the future of our children.”