Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we do have a financial crisis in our country. The debt limit we will be considering tomorrow is the thermometer, the canary in the coal mine that tells us we are at a dangerous level. For example, we have reached it faster and at higher levels than we ever have, the result of which is that our debt rise is telling us we have to raise our debt limit. Those things happen periodically, but this one would be the largest debt limit increase in our history. We have never had such a surge. The deficit for this single fiscal year ending is expected to be $1.5 trillion. The largest deficit President Bush ever had, and it was large, was $450 billion. The last 2 years have been $1.2 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and this year it is expected to be $1.5 trillion. Under the President's budget, we will go from interest on our debt this year of $240 billion to $940 billion in the tenth year. That is for a single year. For example, our education and transportation budgets have greatly expanded. Spending $940 billion on interest will crowd out tremendous portions of the good things we would like to do with taxpayers' money. Instead of being able to improve our infrastructure or do other things we think could be good, we will be sending that money to debtholders abroad to pay them back for the money they have loaned us that we have been spending now. As I speak, 42 cents of every dollar we spend will be borrowed. This is a very real situation.…”