Political Quotes

“I have to say that one of the prior Members who spoke on the Republican side talked about the reason he came to Congress. It was to straighten out the fiscal responsibility of the United States. That is the reason I came here, and I think probably the reason most of us came here. When I came to Congress in the 1980's the Congress was suffering from delusion: magicians, smoke and mirrors. We were saying that you could raise defense spending and you could balance the budget at the same time, after you cut taxes. That was 1981. We went through 1981 to 1986, and finally Bill Bradley in the Senate and Dan Rostenkowski in the House put together a tax bill that went to real supply and demand, instead of tax credits for tax credits' sake. In 1986 we took away false choices. We went to a closer economic picture. Then in 1991 some of us sweat blood here on two or three occasions after we had a special summit over there in Virginia. We stopped and forced the President of the United States to reverse his speech promises of ``read my lips, no new taxes.'' He adopted taxes, we passed it, and we started a trend to contain deficits in the United States.”