Political Quotes

“I think what this amendment is all about really is honest budgeting, specifically honest budgeting in the age of surpluses. Pay-go is a relic of the era of deficits. It was designed at the time for the worthy purpose of preventing further growth in existing deficits. What the Ryan amendment does is it simply updates this tool so that it will also work when there are surpluses. If, God forbid, we go back to the days of deficits, this tool will continue to work as it was designed, as it was intended, as it worked then. But today, fortunately, we are in a time of surplus and we need to update this tool. Theoretically, under the current budget rules, if we want to use part of the on-budget surplus, the non-Social Security surplus for a tax cut, the rules say you have got to cut entitlement spending in order to do that. Now, we certainly do not want to cut entitlement spending because we want to lower taxes from the on-budget surplus, and we do not. When we propose a tax cut, what we do is we waive this rule. We pretend it is not there. Well, that is not the right way to do things.”