Political Quotes

“What's so maddening about the sequester drama, just like the earlier fiscal cliff drama and the looming government shutdown drama, is that it is hopelessly beside the point. The path to fiscal sustainability is not merely cutting budgets, raising tax rates, or closing a few loopholes. It is about fundamentally doing business differently. Health care costs demand that we accelerate health care reform, which we're already working on in Oregon and in a number of other communities and health care systems across the country. These reforms, if put into effect nationally, would save more in health care costs over the next 10 years than the entire $1.2 trillion sequester. Everybody is getting excited about across-the-board cuts in the Department of Defense, but no one is talking about how we fundamentally change our philosophy of military compensation, benefits, and the size of the force to come to grips with the cost of an all-volunteer Army. Of course, at a minimum, we should also dramatically reduce and shift resources away from the vast nuclear weapons stockpile and the three redundant delivery systems which we haven't used in 68 years and probably never will. We have 10 times more nuclear firepower than we need for deterrence. It is past time to scale down that archaic symbol of the Cold War and save hundreds of billions of dollars at no risk to American security.…”