Political Quotes

“I would first like to thank Chairman Ryan and the Budget Committee staff for their hard work on H.R. 3581, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act. Unless you've been living on Mars the last year, it should not come as a surprise to hear that our country is broke. However, what should surprise you is that the true extent of our country's debt crisis is a lot worse than anyone in Washington is letting on. How much worse? That's the thing, nobody knows; and we won't ever know until we reform the broken budget process in Washington, DC. As many have talked about before, our budget process is broken. Simply put, we need to make the budget process more transparent. Fortunately, today we are taking a step in the right direction with H.R. 3581, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2011. I introduced this bill in December, along with Chairman Ryan, as part of a comprehensive set of reforms to overhaul Washington's broken budget process. The bill before the House today--the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act--is a common-sense attempt to introduce more ``sunshine'' and ``common sense'' into our budget process. What would this legislation do? Specifically, this bill recognizes the budgetary impact of government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by bringing these black holes of debt out from the shadows into the sunshine and on-budget.…”