Political Quotes

“I would like to say this again. Sometimes back home I get in trouble for being too honest, brutally honest at times about what really the situation is here in Washington as I explain it to people and do radio talk shows or town meetings or whatever. If we are talking about the deficit for this coming fiscal year, which is fiscal year 1998, and as the gentleman has pointed out, it is $49 billion less than our plan when the Congress came in and passed the 7-year balanced budget plan, the deficit for fiscal year 1998, according to our glidepath that we originally passed, was going to be $139 billion, and now this new plan, as agreed upon by the President, has a $90 billion budget deficit and we discussed the fact that it is up from last year, part of that, though, and in all fairness and in brutal candor to the American people, which I believe that they now expect and deserve, is that the President in this agreement wanted to increase some discretionary spending in the short run over what he calls his priorities. Again, this is a system that has worked very well for over 200 years in this country. It includes an executive branch with veto power. We have to have a supermajority, a two-thirds vote of both bodies to override his veto. This Congress does not have that. If we want to see progress made at the end of the day, there has to be some compromise on both sides.”