Political Quotes

“If there is a young person who, for whatever reason, missed school today and is sitting, listening to this debate, let me tell them why I think their country is in such debt and why I think the President's budget does not help a whole lot. The deficit is about $150 billion. There is a thing called the national debt that, as I speak, is $5,098,866,418,898. It is worth $19,250 for every man, woman, child in America. The reason that we got a $5 trillion debt is because entitlement spending in this country has gone through the roof, and both parties are sitting here yelling at each other about who caused the problem. In my opinion, both parties have let the entitlements grow to the point that they are 50 percent of the budget. When we add the interest element to the equation, 67 percent of the Federal budget is on auto pilot. If you want us to balance the budget, please make us change the reason Medicare has grown 2,200 percent since 1980. If you want to free America up, balance the budget and help people, please change welfare so the average person does not stay on it 10 years. If you want us to do something about education in your State, please make us change Medicaid so it does not grow at 19 percent a year and takes money away from the State to run its education program just to get health care dollars. President Clinton's budget has no entitlement reforms. It does not address why we are in debt.”