Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator. Madam President, I would cite that the interest factor my colleague mentioned is very real. This year we are expected to pay $240 billion in interest. How much is that? That is just a number. The amount of money that we spend under the Federal Highway Program is $40 billion. The amount of money we spend on Federal aid to education is $100 billion. This year we are paying $240 billion. However, under the budget that was submitted to the Congress by the President--the Democratic Senate has never brought one forward on their own--that budget added $13 trillion more to the debt, and the Congressional Budget Office, our nonpartisan accountants, has calculated what the interest payment would be in the 10th year of that 10-year budget. It has concluded the interest payment that year would be $940 billion. That is larger than Medicare, it is larger than Medicaid, it is larger than Social Security, it is larger than the defense budget. These numbers are incredibly large and we cannot--as a gentleman told me at a townhall meeting--borrow our way out of debt. We cannot keep spending. It is dragging down our economic growth right now. It is costing jobs right now. There are some people who say we do not have enough jobs; we need to spend more. Where are we going to get that money? Borrow that money. We are already borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. Can we afford to borrow more to try to get a sugar high, keep growth artificially growing now?…”