Political Quotes

“Madam President, let me first say that I wish this Chamber were full of our colleagues who had listened to my Republican colleague's description--the Senator from Pennsylvania--of what this bill is and what this bill isn't. It is not a COVID relief bill. Senator Toomey did an excellent job. I am hoping that people are watching it on their TV screens. They really can't be reading the bill yet because it is not constructed. I don't want to repeat all of the excellent points the Senator from Pennsylvania made, but I wanted to come down because I think we have grown immune to these vast amounts of money. I always knew we were going to be in big trouble when we stopped talking about hundreds of billions of dollars and switched to talking about trillions of dollars. When we talk about $1 trillion or $2 trillion, it just doesn't sound like as much as $200 billion or $800 billion, which was in the stimulus package under the Obama administration. The fact of the matter is we have already authorized $4 trillion in COVID relief. That is 18 percent of last year's GDP, and, roughly, $1 trillion is yet to be spent. Some of that isn't even obligated, and we are going to be debating, over the next couple of days, $1.9 trillion. So I just wanted to come down here to the floor and try to illustrate what a massive amount of money $1.9 trillion is. You have to use analogies. Again, the human mind really can't contemplate what ``a trillion'' is.…”