Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to talk about our dilemma in the Federal Government. The American people are watching as we try to deal with our spending issues. I know there is a big debate over the 2- week spending issue, an issue where we are trying to cut $4 billion. Hopefully, some resolve will come to that. What the American people are seeing is that unless there is some type of gun to our heads or some type of urgent situation in front of us, we do not have the ability in this body to deal with spending issues in a disciplined or courageous way. Everybody understands that, and they understand that the only way we are looking at whatever spending cuts will take place--I know right now there are discussions over what they might be, but the only reason this issue is being addressed is that we have this deadline of government funding ending in the next week. I know the Presiding Officer is someone who served as a county executive and had to balance budgets each year and had to figure out a way to live within their means. I know that upon arriving here a few months ago, he had to be totally aghast at the fact that we are taking in $2.2 trillion this year and spending $3.7 trillion this year. If we put all the discretionary spending we have, if we took every bit of nonmandatory spending or discretionary spending off the table, we still would not have a balanced budget. Everybody in this country knows that where we are is totally out of line.…”