Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, Thomas Jefferson once wrote, To preserve the independence of the people we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. Unfortunately, it increasingly appears this Congress has chosen the latter path of profuse spending and the servitude to Big Government that results therefrom. For the next 60 minutes, I and my colleagues are going to talk about the problem our country faces from a very different perspective than you have heard during the last 60 minutes. I want to start by pointing out the nature of this problem in terms of government spending. This chart shows the deficit each year, starting in 2000. In 2000 and 2001 under a Republican Congress and first a Democratic President and a Republican President we had a balanced budget and therefore we generated surpluses and, in fact, the two previous years before that we generated a total of $500 billion in surpluses that were paid down against the national debt. Then came the recession and September 11, 2001, and spending increases. Many have, I think fairly, criticized the previous President and Congress for spending too much money during this period of time when deficits rose as high as $400 billion. In fact, this deficit in 2004 was the highest deficit in American history until we got to the very end of the Republican majority, when it went to $450 billion. Staggering sums of money; too much money spent.…”