Political Quotes

“On behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus, we would like to discuss the fiscal cliff and our position on the ongoing negotiations. We didn't get here, Madam Speaker, by accident. I was elected in 1992. In the 1993 budget, we addressed fiscal responsibility by passing the Clinton budget. It was very controversial. In fact, it only passed by one vote of the House, and the Vice President had to vote in the Senate to break the tie. That budget put us on a trajectory toward fiscal responsibility. That was interrupted by a controversy in 1995, when the Republicans, using the votes on that budget, picked up a majority in the House and tried to dismantle that budget. President Clinton allowed the government to get shut down rather than dismantle the budget. That budget stayed into effect until 2001. In 2001, Chairman Greenspan was answering questions like: Are we paying off the national debt too quickly, and should we pay off the national debt? The projections were that, by 2008, the entire national debt held by the public would be paid off with no money owed to China, Japan, or Saudi Arabia. We would have paid off all of those debts. All the money would have been back in the trust funds by 2013. That's where we were beginning in 2001, but the Republicans talked people into thinking that you could pass tax cuts without paying for them, massive tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. There were two wars not paid for and a prescription drug benefit not paid for.…”