Political Quotes

“I suggest quite to the contrary--that it is exactly the definition that we are using which this Congress has written into the statute. It is the definition that we use when we are required to assess whether we are about to exceed the national debt. So it is the definition that is not speculative. It is the definition that we are accustomed to using. It is the definition that the American people understand, in part because we have helped them understand it by using things like the debt clock, which focuses on the total national debt. Finally, and most fundamentally, the debt is not a projected amount, it is a fiscal reality. It is, as anyone knows who has ever balanced a family budget or dealt with the books of a business, the last number on the page after you have looked at what your revenues are, what your expenses are, and you can see whether you are in a profit or a debt situation. That is the circumstance that the U.S. Government is in when we look at that bottom number and say, oh, my goodness, we have just added another $107 billion of deficit in the fiscal year 1997 that will then become an additional layer on top of our national debt.”