Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Arrington for leading this discussion tonight and for his kind comments. It is interesting, my friend talks about Pennsylvania's budget, and I was proud to serve there and be part of the process. I thought it was a difficult and a broken process there. We would pass a budget weeks beyond the deadline or sometimes months. There would be vigorous discussions with the Governor on what that budget should look like, but at the end of the day, we did it. My friend is exactly right. We passed a budget where expected revenues matched the appropriations that we put forward. So it was a little unbelievable to come here and see that we haven't done that in about, at least, 20 years here. We certainly haven't balanced the budget in almost our lifetime here. And so as broken as I thought the process was at the State level, at least at the end of the process we had a product that balanced the budget. So I want to just express my appreciation and thanks to Mr. Arrington for leading this discussion. I share--as he knows, we have had discussions about this--the deep concerns for the current state of our Nation's finances. We talk about this. We serve on the Ways and Means Committee together, and I think Ways and Means Committee members understand the problems we are faced with if we don't address this. I also serve on the Budget Committee, and there we talk about the problems that we are faced with. But this has to extend beyond just those two committees.…”