Pat Toomey

We cannot continue on this course.

I believe we have to have an economy that is growing, creating prosperity, that we need to help poor people get jobs and move forward in their lives, not be dependent, ever dependent on more and more Government checks, handouts, and…

I believe that budget should balance. We should balance it at least within 10 years.

So it has been now 4 years since the Democratic-led Senate produced a budget.

We are now on a systemically dangerous path of debt.

The picture CBO paints of the next 10 years is immensely disturbing.

Our gross Federal debt after rising $6 trillion in the last 4 years will rise another $9 trillion by 2023.

I would like to begin briefly by thanking Senator Casey for his collaboration in recommending these three nominees.

I appreciate also your timely scheduling of this hearing.

I am looking forward to seeing a supplemental that is well crafted and, I hope, properly offset, because we also have a fiscal crisis of enormous magnitude.

I will be very interested in seeing what the net effect of these changes are because we know that the interest rate component will reflect a significant adverse valuation here.

Before the taxpayers are faced with greater losses, I believe we must determine how the FHA got into this position, Mr. Secretary, and how it intends to get out.

It is a pretty large effect that comes from the difference in the interest rate.

The drop in the capital ratio was expected to be temporary, and that it would return above 2 percent within the next 2 or 3 years, even if FHA were to make no policy changes at all.

Tax reform is spending cuts. There is no difference if I give you a mortgage interest deduction or I cut you a check.

You know, there is another approach that you can take in negotiations, and in my experience it has been a more successful one.

The spending reductions have systematically been overstated in recent years by the President

It looks like $200 billion of what they put under the $600 billion heading is in fact revenue--fees and various other forms of revenue.

The President's proposal is almost entirely new taxes and virtually nothing... on the spending restraint

In the economy that we have now, with the highest corporate tax in the developed world... it's impossible to envision generating the kind of healthy economic growth

I think it is just a bad time to be keeping all of the tax candy, the tax expenditures, and lifting taxes on the few people who are actually creating jobs in this economy.

If revenue has to be part of this--I don't think that that's economically or fiscally necessary or optimal--but if it is politically necessary, should it not at least be generated in a way that does the least economic harm?

The President has been very clear about this--calling for higher marginal tax rates

I think it is clear that there is a headline tax increase that he wants of $1.6 trillion.

It just seems an extraordinary coincidence that something so counterintuitive to suggest that some of the most troubled economies of Europe could have a zero risk weighting.