Political Quotes

“The sequester drama that we are watching play out this week is exactly why I voted against the New Year's Day budget package. Two months ago, all of the forces were aligned to force a bigger agreement, but we set our sights too low. It generated too little revenue, and, most importantly, there was not a fundamental reform in the way that we do business. We merely put off the fiscal cliff in order to have not one, not two, but three such dramas between now and next summer. Friday is the sequestration; March 27, the continuing resolution runs out; and sometime this summer, the Treasury Department is going to run out of capacity to keep juggling the national debt, and we face that drama all over again. Actually, there's a fourth cliff if you count the so-called ``dairy cliff'' which will potentially double milk prices in September. The path forward is to focus on areas of potential agreement between the right and the left. A great place to start is health care. Reform is taking place around the country. And, in fact, nowhere is it more exciting and promising than what is happening in Oregon where we are working in concert with the implementation of the Health Care Reform Act to squeeze out waste and inefficiency. We are working to reward value instead of volume, and the Federal Government has bet $1.9 billion that we will be able to reduce health care inflation at least 2 percent a year and maintain quality.…”