Political Quotes

“Thank you very much, Mr. President. We are on the verge of a possible government shutdown, which is extraordinarily regrettable. Controlling the deficit and paying down the debt is a critical priority of this country and must be done. It is a difficult challenge, but not insurmountable. We have done it before. In the 1990s I was a Member of the House of Representatives under President Clinton. We were able to push through an economic program that did not focus exclusively and entirely, as the Republican proposal does, on domestic discretionary spending. It looked across the board at not only domestic spending but defense spending. It looked on the revenue side. It also looked at some of our entitlement programs. The result from the 1993- 1994 action of the Democratic Congress was that by 2000, when President Bush was sworn in with a Republican Congress, there was a projected multitrillion-dollar surplus. We were looking at robust employment. I think it is sometimes difficult to listen to some of my colleagues talk about the deficit and President Obama when recognizing, under their leadership, President Bush and a Republican Congress, a surplus was turned into a huge deficit. In fact, President Bush doubled the national debt in 8 years. It had taken almost more than 200 years to accumulate a debt he doubled.…”