Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the time to thank my friend from New York and the gentleman from Nevada for helping to put together this special hour on what is really important in this country. We know just how vital and vibrant we want our economy to be, and it is hard to do that if we are not taking care of our credit. I appreciate both of these gentlemen for taking this hour to talk about this. I would also like to thank my colleague from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, who spoke so eloquently on so many different areas in government that would be affected if we were to have a shutdown and how the Affordable Care Act is helping Americans--helping working Americans do better. Whether you are from Houston, where she lives, or the north Texas area where I am from, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, people are concerned. People are starting to get very worried about the very dangerous prospect of approaching the legal debt limit since we are only 3 days away from default. In 2011, the credit agency Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time in history. S&P said this back then: The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.…”