Political Quotes

“The Presiding Officer is from Virginia, and I know he understands military men and women very well. It is a very patriotic State when it comes to their military footprint. I am confident that he and I--and others--will be able to fix the problem that occurred in the budget agreement. Let me say about the agreement itself that I do appreciate the fact that we were able to find a bipartisan way forward to relieve sequestration from the military and nonmilitary for a couple of years. That is just a drop in the bucket as far as what we have to do to repair the military. GDP spending on the military is moving toward an alltime low over a 10-year period with sequestration. The historical average has been well over 4 percent, and we are going to hit below 3 percent if we continue sequestration. That is an issue for another day. The budget agreement called for relieving sequestration in the pay- fors. Quite frankly, they were not big. They did not change the course of the country. They are not what the Senator from Virginia and I hoped for. We would have liked to have done entitlement reform. I would like to do Tax Code simplification. I am willing to eliminate deductions in the Tax Code and take some of the money to pay down the debt, even though some folks on my side say we have to put it all in tax reductions. And I think the Senator from Virginia would be willing to engage in commonsense entitlement reform to keep us from becoming Greece. This was the best deal we could get.…”