Political Quotes

“Let me thank my colleague for yielding me this time. If we roll the tape back, I can hear, as if it was yesterday, Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Fed, testifying before this Congress--and right after President Bush was sworn into office--about the fact of this $5 trillion surplus and the opportunity to pay off the debt. We were having a discussion about whether it would be good for our economy--this is in the record of this Congress--whether it would be good for our economy to pay off all of our debt or rather we should leave some debt on the books. That is what was projected. It was said at the end of the Bush Presidency, we can be an entirely debt-free country. Well, here we are today in a much different situation. Now, if you want a balanced budget, then you should follow those people who know how to get us there. Democrats led the way under President Clinton, and we had a surplus. We had a balanced budget. We were paying down national debt. And that is where we are returning our country to, which is a responsible fiscal policy. And as we see the economic turnaround, gross domestic product, 6 percent in the negative a year ago. We saw $700,000 lost in January a year ago. What we see now is a 5.7 percent increase in gross domestic product. We see purchasing orders up, manufacturing up, in today's report, by 1 percent, which is the second month in a row. We see home sales up. We see a country on the rebound.”