Political Quotes

“Thank you. Madam Speaker, I am listening to my friend from Louisiana rewrite history. It is not the President who is threatening to default on the national debt. It is the Republican Congress that is refusing to do what was granted to every President in the past--Republican or Democrat--which is to deal with raising the debt ceiling, which is, after all, money we have already spent, money that they approved. They have been in charge for the last 5 years. The notion that we can somehow distinguish the semantics of this proposal, distinguishing between sovereign debt and the rest of the 80 million transactions that the Treasury makes every day, is lunacy. If you disagree with our protections to seniors, veterans, the military, Medicare, Medicaid, the FBI, food safety, cut them, but you don't. You nibble away at them. You have never offered a balanced budget when you have been in charge. We had balanced budgets when President Clinton was President. Thank you very much. Unless you assure everyone, nobody is protected. As for the notion somehow that the President walked away from the negotiations with Simpson-Bowles, where was Paul Ryan? I like Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan refused to embrace Simpson-Bowles' proposals. They cannot pass their vision. They want to blame the President and the American people.…”