Political Quotes

“I come over here with a degree of sadness, because the rule prohibits the consideration of the Blue Dog substitute on budget enforcement. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) made a speech a while ago that I could not say any better about why the Blue Dog budget enforcement ought to be passed. My other young friend talked about spending. If we want to talk about wasteful spending, let me just talk about it for a second. In July of 2002, the debt ceiling in this country was raised $450 billion. On Memorial Day weekend last year, it was raised another $980 billion. The other night in the defense bill, we had to raise it again, $650-plus. In the last 3 years, the debt of this country, the debt ceiling has been raised over $2 trillion. At 5 percent interest, what we have done following this economic game plan is raise taxes $100 billion a year every year, and my Republican colleagues want to talk about wasteful spending. I can think of nothing more wasteful than interest, because we get no health care, no military, no education, no nothing. But it is even worse than that. Years ago, when we heard about the GDP, percentage of GDP and the deficit, they said, do not worry about it. Do my colleagues know who was buying our debt then? Americans. Do my colleagues know who is financing our debt now? Seventy percent of our debt last year was financed by foreign interests.”