Political Quotes

“Mr. President, earlier this week the Congressional Budget Office released its latest long-term outlook. Of course, the CBO, as it is known around here, is the authoritative guide to all things involving the finances and the fiscal picture for the Federal Government. That long-term outlook offered us a sobering reminder the Federal Government cannot defy the laws of fiscal gravity forever. In other words, as every American knows--every working family knows--your output can't exceed your input forever. In other words, you can't spend more money than you have coming in. Unless you are the Federal Government, of course. But sooner or later we will have to reverse the trend of debt accumulation before it destroys our economy, because our current path is simply unsustainable. The crazy thing about it is that everybody in Washington, particularly the Congress, knows that. Yet it seems as though they are in a state of denial about what could very well happen to our country and to our future if we don't act. As I said, it is a very sobering message, and it is also very different from the message President Obama has been delivering lately. He likes to talk about America's short-term budget deficit falling. To remind everybody, there is the debt and there is the deficit. The deficit we measure on an annual basis. Debt is the cumulative shortfall between what comes in the front door and what goes out the back door. That debt is now about $17 trillion.…”