Political Quotes

“I am delighted to join my friend and colleague from the great State of Minnesota--the distinguished cochair of the Progressive Caucus, of which I have the privilege of serving as a vice chair. I truly want to say to our colleagues that the Progressive Caucus has been on the mark, and in fact it stays on a pattern, frankly, that should draw good-thinking, well-intentioned Americans from both sides of the aisle. Let me recount for my cochair the number of job fairs and summits that we've had. We have not yet finished, and we'll probably go into 2012. I want to focus on just a couple of points that I believe have been the Progressive message. It is the good Samaritan message, the secular good Samaritan message: that we're all in this together. It is to recognize that the Nation is not so broke--or it is not broke--that it cannot help the most vulnerable. In a supercommittee hearing, it was delineated by the head of the OMB that, actually, Mr. Ellison, our debt-deficit is 8\1/2\ percent of the gross domestic product. That means that 92 percent is rolling along, not the way we would like it, but it is rolling along. It's as if we took a family's budget, and they said, ``You know what? We have less than 10 percent debt--we've got 100 percent, but 10 percent debt. Let's work to diminish that debt, but let me not stop feeding the three children, and let me not stop paying the mortgage,'' if that were the ratio of our debt.…”