Political Quotes

“Well, perhaps the most important thing that we did was return to pay-as-you-go budget scoring, which is very simple. It's the same thing that we all do in our own checkbooks at home and the same thing every business in America has to do. It says that you have to have money on one side of the ledger if you want to spend it on the other, pay-as-you-go. If you want to decrease revenue or you want to increase spending, you have to find a way to pay for it, an offset, you have to find an offset. And every spending bill and every authorization bill that we have passed out of this House this year, every single one of them has been compliant with pay-as-you-go. It has paid for itself; it's been budget neutral. So, the context of this debate with the President about his willingness to veto these bills and saying it's excessive spending, the American people should be aware of the fact that that's in the context of our returning to pay-as-you-go budget scoring. That's what led to the record surpluses of the 1990s that I referred to earlier. And the failure of this Congress to renew pay-as-you-go budget scoring in 2002 is what led to the record deficits that we're mired in today.”