Political Quotes

“This is a budget that we are not familiar with in terms of the underlying assumptions because up until now we have been using numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. Maybe some people that watched the machinations of the budget process in earlier years will recall that our Republican colleagues shut down the Congress, shut down the government twice, insisting on Congressional Budget Office numbers instead of OMB numbers. Well, now they have reversed course and decided that they want OMB numbers because they are more optimistic, and they do not want the Congressional Budget Office numbers which are more conservative. We think this is a time to be cautious and conservative about our projections. Last year we used a 10-year projection because if we went out over 10 years, there was a $5.6 trillion surplus, and that enabled our colleagues on the Republican side to justify a $1.7 trillion tax cut. But now they do not want that 10-year projection, they only want a 5-year budget because of that $5.6 trillion surplus; $5 trillion has disappeared. Where has it gone? Well, the biggest single component of that loss is attributable to the tax cuts; 43 percent of it. The lost surplus is due to the tax cuts.”