Political Quotes

“I thank the majority leader, and I appreciate his courtesy, as always, in so many issues that come before the Senate. I wish to say a couple of things. One is fundamental, and that is that the crisis we face--and I think my Senate colleague from Tennessee would agree--is not the debt limit, it is the debt. It is the surging debt. The debt limit is Congress's power, and it says to the administration: You can't borrow any more money. We only authorize so much money to be borrowed. Like a 102-degree mark in our thermometer, it is not the thermometer that is the problem. It is the underlying fever that the thermometer indicates. So reaching the debt limit so soon after we raised it is an indication we have something unhealthy in our system that needs to be dealt with. Senator Reid has very difficult challenges before him. It is not easy. But as I like to remind him, he asked for the job and, hopefully, he can make progress at this point in time. But to raise the debt ceiling, the majority leader knows a couple of things must be done. He knows, one, the Republican Congress and the American people want to see changes in our spending. It is on a reckless path. We cannot continue on this path. So the idea is, shouldn't we change what we are doing that has put us in a situation in which 40 cents of every $1 we spend today is borrowed? This year we will pay $240 billion in interest on our national debt.…”