Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we are debating a bill that a number of us have spoken of on a number of occasions. Since my last address on the Senate floor on this topic, we received a score on the bill from the Congressional Budget Office. Now, remember, it is the CBO's role to put together a score on legislation we are considering. It is part of how the system works in Washington so we can assess what will and will not add to the deficit and how it will do so if it does. It is an important part of the process. When we finally received the CBO score just about 48 hours ago, we discovered a few things. We discovered that, despite the representations we have heard by the bill's staunchest advocates to the effect that the bill would be paid for--that it is, that it would not add to the debt and deficit, and that it would not add to the debt and deficit in a way that also didn't involve raising taxes--it turned out that the CBO rejected the claim that this bill was paid for. In fact, the CBO concluded that $256 of the $550 billion it claimed in pay-fors did not pay. They are not paid for, and thus that they will considerably--I mean, we are talking here about over a quarter of a trillion dollars that would go right on to the debt and deficit.…”