Political Quotes

“If I recall, Senator Thune quoted the Chief Actuary, Richard Foster, in his statement that this would collapse during the debate on the floor. This was talked about, but the administration and our Democratic colleagues refused to listen. They continued to repeat the idea that they would have this large surplus. They counted this money as surplus money in justifying voting for passage of this bill when common sense told us in a host of areas, including this one, it was not going to produce a surplus. It goes to mean something systemic about our problem and why this Congress now going into the third year will be borrowing 40 percent of the money the United States spends. It is because the politics here is that we want to pass the bill. When somebody shows it is not actuarially sound and it is going to cost money in the outyears, they don't worry about that; somebody will take care of that in the outyears. It is that kind of mentality that I think has helped overrule commonsense budgeting. We have not had a budget now in over 900 days in this Senate. So this is not the kind of responsible approach to managing the taxpayers' money. I know Senator Barrasso raised this repeatedly, that this should not be counted, but did we hear Secretary Sebelius at that time? Back in 2009 she wrote to Senator Kennedy and said to express the administration's support for inclusion of this bill, calling it an innovative bill.…”