Political Quotes

“this is truly an Enron budget. The Republican Budget Committee has cooked the books and produced the most seriously flawed budget in my career. The accounting gimmicks are spectacular. We have a 5-year budget instead of the customary 10-year budget. This is because it hides dwindling revenue from the gradually implemented Bush tax cut. If refashioned, a 10-year budget would show much larger deficits. Republicans also chose to use the politically crafted OMB numbers, instead of the non-partisan CBO numbers. Whether we insert political or non-partisan numbers into this resolution, the story is no different at the end of the day. Because all of the accounting tricks in the world cannot hide that we are still raiding Social Security and Medicare. And we are still growing the national debt. The Republican Party is trying to hide a budget deficit of $257 billion next year and that is just plain wrong. In this budget, providing a Medicare prescription drug benefit and increasing provider payments do not reflect half of what is necessary according to reasonable forecasts. And this budget does not even take into account the additional spending and further tax cuts proposed by the President. This time next year it is very likely we will have a budget deficit double or triple what is reflected in this resolution.”