Political Quotes

“I think it is appropriate today to take a look at what was happening 1 year ago today. A year ago today, the budget deficit was forecast by the Congressional Budget Office for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, to be $1.8 trillion. The jobs that were lost in the month of January were more than 700,000 jobs 1 year ago in January. The stock market was trending straight down, and it bottomed out in March at 6,500. We had just had a loss of 6 percentage points for the quarter in GDP, one of the largest in recent memory drops in gross domestic product. That is what we were facing 1 year ago today. As the gentleman from Ohio said, this Congress was elected to make difficult decisions. This Congress was elected to work together and do give and take. Look, every bill that you pass is going to have some things that you like and some things that you don't like, but when the country is staring into the abyss, literally facing economic calamity if we fail to act, 1 year ago moving into the spring of 2009, this Congress did act. In fact, February of 2009. What has happened since then compared to 1 year ago today? I talked about how the budget forecast was expected to be $1.8 trillion in deficit. Well, we ended at about $1.2 trillion in deficit.”