Political Quotes

“I think we know what this budget resolution conference report is all about. The majority wants to provide the Republican presidential candidate with a budget that he can work with, and that is fine. I read on the front page of the Washington Post today that Presidential Candidate George Bush has recommended another $46 billion of spending this week alone, $13 billion more for education, $25 billion more for defense, and then, of course, he wants a tax cut of over one and a half trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Well, that is great. We are all for many of those things. But the thing that troubles us the most is that we have what may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to do right by our children's generation. We have an unprecedented surplus ahead of us. Is it right to use that surplus for our own benefit, or is it better to use that surplus to pay off the debt that we incurred so our children do not have to pay it off and so our children do not have to pay the quarter of a trillion dollars in interest costs that are due every year. And those interest costs will be a lot more when they are our age. We are the ones who had the benefit of running up that enormous deficit during the 1980s. We now have the responsibility to pay it off. First things first. Pay off the $3.7 trillion of our public debt so that our children are not burdened with that debt. Second thing, provide for our own retirement, provide for our Social Security and Medicare.”