Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this is the Sessions-McCaskill amendment, offered with Senator McCaskill, my colleague from Missouri. It is a bipartisan amendment, and it is one that I think is very important. I hope my colleagues will give it serious consideration. We have close to enough votes to make it law. I am absolutely convinced it is one thing that will work to reduce the surging deficits in our country. The week before last, I traveled my State of Alabama--25 stops, 6 days of travel. People continually expressed to me their concern about the financial future of our country. They want us to do something about it. I heard some of my colleagues express things like: This is just populist anger. It will pass off. We need to keep a cool head here. We don't really have to change how we do business. Things are going to work out somehow, someway, although nothing in the numbers show that. Mr. Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, said last week in his testimony before Congress that our path is unsustainable. That is not the first time he said that. Virtually every economist who has opined in the last 6 months or more on our economy has said our spending levels are unsustainable and threaten the viability of our country's economic system. It is very troubling. We all know that, and we do not need to go into a whole lot of discussion about it. The gross debt of our country has grown to approximately $12 trillion--the highest in our Nation's history. Some of this is internal debt.…”