Political Quotes

“Mr. President, tomorrow morning--unless it has otherwise changed--we will be voting on the request from the majority leader and the President to raise the debt ceiling by more than $1 trillion. It will not actually be a dollar figure. It will be suspended for roughly 1 year--the debt ceiling, that is. So everybody understands what the majority leader and the President are asking us to do: America has maxed out its credit card. It is about $16.7 trillion. I know we talk about millions and billions and trillions as if we could actually conceptualize what that means, but here is an interesting comparison: Under President Obama--he has been in office for about 5 years now--our national debt has gone up $6.1 trillion. The debt accrued by all 43 previous Presidents was $10.6 trillion. Our national debt is $16.7 trillion, and President Obama has asked to raise that credit limit another $1 trillion. Here is the catch: If he had a plan to actually deal with how we are going to pay down this $16.7 trillion, then maybe there would be a discussion. What he wants is what he called a clean debt ceiling, which is a blank check. President Obama wants a blank check to continue to borrow more and more money--not so we, the present generation, can live up to our responsibilities and make sure we are fiscally responsible but, rather, to foist that debt off onto the next generation and beyond with absolutely no plan in place to repay it. We have heard discussions about grand bargains.…”