Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we had votes this afternoon on the continuing resolution proposal from the House, and the Senate did not approve that. We did not have the 60 votes necessary to accept that. The Democratic proposal, which I would suggest does nothing about the debt, failed. I guess there were four or five party defections. If we take what direction those defections meant, all of those defections went to the more conservative side in that several thought the House reductions in spending were not enough, and several Democratic colleagues thought the Democratic majority leader's proposal did not go far enough. I would just say that what we need to do--and it is very important that we achieve it--is to move toward a gradual, credible, sustained, mature reduction of the deficits this country has faced, and that takes some tough decisionmaking. It doesn't require us to act in an extreme or drastic way, but it means sustained serious changes in the trajectory in which we are headed. I would just note that the House proposed reducing our nondefense discretionary spending $61 billion over the rest of the fiscal year. If we take only the discretionary account, that amounts to about a 6- percent reduction. If we take the entire Federal spending, it is less than a 2-percent reduction in the entire Federal spending.…”