Political Quotes

“I come to the floor today to talk about the fiscal challenges facing this country, and particularly the spending problem we have and how it impacts not only the economy but also the lives of the American people. Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released the latest Budget and Economic Outlook, which confirmed the threat that long-term fiscal imbalances pose to the Nation's economy. The Congressional Budget Office found that the national debt will climb by $10 trillion, to $26 trillion, over the next 10 years if Federal spending continues on its current trajectory. Spending on mandatory programs will remain on auto pilot, resulting in high annual deficits. To kind of put things in perspective, if you go back to 2007 and you look at what the Federal Government spent, it was about $2.7 trillion annually. If you look at what the Federal Government spent in fiscal year 2012, which ended September 30 of last year, it was $3.5 trillion, an increase of nearly 30 percent. Inflation during that same time period was 10.8 percent, meaning that government grew at almost three times the rate of inflation. Again, I want to emphasize what I think is an important point here, because in the discussion we are having about spending and debt, there is somehow this assertion that has been made that this is not a spending problem, that actually this is more a revenue issue.…”