Political Quotes

“Absolutely. I say to my colleague from New Hampshire that the cut, cap, and balance approach is the correct way to approach this problem, because it makes cuts to spending today--real cuts--this year, to this year's budget. It caps spending in the near term, and then it puts into place a balanced budget amendment that would require Congress to balance its budget in the future years. Obviously, that is something many States have. My State of South Dakota has that. I know that the ``live free or die'' State of New Hampshire has some very distinct and direct views about the role of government and making its role limited, keeping spending under control, and living within your means. Cut, cap, and balance is the correct approach because it puts the emphasis on getting spending under control. If you look at the five times our country balanced the budget since 1969, the average amount we spent was just under 18.7 percent of GDP--our entire economy. This year, we are set to spend 24.3 percent of our GDP. That is just on the Federal Government--a historic high. The President spends substantially above this average in his budget for every year. You literally have to go back to the end of World War II to find a time when we spent this amount as a percentage of GDP on the Federal Government. Part of the reason for this is the huge increase we have seen in nondefense discretionary spending from 2008 to 2010.…”