Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we earlier had a cloture vote on, what I guess is called the jobs bill. It has some things in it that I think might be helpful to this economy. Continuing certain tax cuts is important. But I have to say, it is very much a disappointment that the legislation spends $100 billion more than we have. In other words, it will add $100 billion to the debt of the United States. It was a few weeks ago that this Senate voted for a pay-go idea that asserted we were not going to spend money we didn't have and we were going to pay for what we spent. In other words, if we increase spending, we are either going to raise taxes or cut spending somewhere else to keep us on the right track. But we have not done that. This is actually a $140 billion bill. This bill has $40 billion in costs assumed by the CBO for continuing the tax credits that have been in place, some of them, for 10 years. Those are to be continued, and they score that as costing $40-some-odd billion. But that is paid for. Our Democratic colleagues are prepared to pay for allowing the American people to keep money that is theirs; money that the government hasn't assessed against them and extracted from them over a 10-year period. That is paid for through other increases in taxes and other activities which, so far, offset that. But the $104 billion of new spending is not paid for. Regardless, the bill is a bill that adds $104 billion to the debt. I don't see how that is a responsible action for our Congress.…”