Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I certainly echo what has been said by my neighbors, my colleagues from Nebraska and Wyoming. Their States, as well as mine, all have a balanced budget amendment that requires our States to live within our means. Our States do it. They do it the old- fashioned way. They do it by--in our case, in the State of South Dakota, this year--having to make some hard decisions about spending. But they balanced their budget, and they did it without raising taxes, which I think is a great model for what we ought to be doing in Washington, DC. As the Senator from Wyoming has pointed out, this is the largest requested increase in the debt ceiling in history. At $2.4 trillion-- and, of course, I think we are going to be asked at some point to vote on the Democratic leader's proposal, which, as both of my colleagues have pointed out, doesn't get us there. If we even use the standard I think everybody realizes makes a lot of sense--and that is if we are going to increase the debt limit by $2.4 trillion, we also ought to look at how we reduce spending by $2.4 trillion. That way we are getting a dollar-for-dollar reduction in spending, and we are fundamentally addressing the real issue, which isn't the debt limit, it is the debt. We all talk about the debt limit, and it is looming, looking us right in the eye right now. But the real issue is the fact that year over year over year we continue to spend more than we take in. We are not living within our means.…”