Political Quotes

“now, turning to an issue that has to be worked out in our U.S. Senate, is the challenge of having honest budget numbers for the conversation over the reconciliation bill. Back in 1974, the Senate and House were alarmed over the growing deficits. They were microscopic compared to the type of deficits we have today, but still people said: Let's not get on that path of expanding the national debt. Let's create a real budgeting process where we lay out a vision at the front end so that the bills that are passed by the committees--the revenue bills and the policy bills--fit into that budget framework so we will have control over the result, whether it is a surplus that we want or whether we want to spend more and run up some deficit because, perhaps, it is a year in which the economy is dipping, and we need to provide some stimulus. But the point was a front-end budgeting process into which we could put the effects of all of these different bills in the course of a year.”