Political Quotes

“I should note a couple things from the debate that my good friend from Utah has stated. He said he is in favor of a balanced budget amendment. I know he has been very sincere about that. My difference is I am in favor of a balanced budget. The two are not necessarily the same. We have been voting closer and closer to a balanced budget each of the last 4 years. We have seen, after the enormous increase in deficits and the national debt that grew up with Presidential budgets throughout the 1980's, for actually 12 years, beginning in the early 1980's straight through 1992, where we saw a tripling of the national debt--I do not want to sound partisan, but I point out those were all Republican budgets and Presidents, Republican Presidents who got virtually every single thing they ever asked for. In fact, the only appropriations bill that President Reagan ever vetoed--the only one--was one that did not spend as much money as he wanted. Yet he had, with his budgets, nearly doubled the national debt. The debt had taken 200 years to build up to the point where he became President. Within 8 years he doubled it. It was nearly tripled by the time his successor, another Republican, finished office. So we actually built up the debt during that time--we are spending over a half a billion dollars every working day just in interest on that. We would not have a deficit today had there not been so much debt built up during the Reagan and Bush administrations.”