Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, there's no question this Congress for many years has had a problem with spending. The Democratic Congress developed a bigger and bigger appetite for spending for 40 years, as it held the majority for years and years. Then Republicans took the House in 1995, and they forced a balanced budget on President Clinton. They had friction between the President and the Congress, and that allowed this country to have a balanced budget. Who would have ever thought--I certainly wouldn't. I know I have got some Democratic friends who would have thought it, but I wouldn't--but when we got a Republican President and we had Republican majorities in the House and Senate, we began to spend again. There wasn't the friction there to hold spending down, and Republicans, I would submit, lost their way and began spending too much money. My first year in Congress, in 2005 and 2006, we shouldn't have spent the money we did. And I can recall being here on the floor and having Democratic friends beating us up, rightfully so, because in 2006 we spent $160 billion more than we had coming in. We didn't have to do that. We shouldn't have done that.…”