Political Quotes

“Madam President, I simply want to again take a moment here, 52 days after we spent until 5 o'clock in the morning debating a budget--the budget that had over 100 amendments offered, a budget that had amendments from both sides offered and rejected but also accepted. Amendments from both sides were accepted into this budget. It passed with a majority. I know there are some of my colleagues on the other side who say we should go into the next step of this debate with certain things taken off the table. I do not understand how we are ever going to get to the point which every economist from left to right has all agreed upon, that we have to put this issue of lurching from one budget crisis to another behind us. The fact is there is an awful lot of consensus about what we need to do. Starting back with the Simpson-Bowles report, then followed up by the Gang of Six and the Domenici-Rivlin report, everyone agrees we need to do at least $4 trillion over the next 10 years. We don't have to solve the whole problem, we just have to take a good step forward. The remarkable thing is even lurching from crisis to crisis we are over half the way there. Depending on how you want to count, we have done between $2.2 and $2.5 trillion of deficit reduction.…”