Political Quotes

“I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time. As has been mentioned, this is an excellent bill that a lot of people did very good work on. I thank them for that. The only issue I want to raise in closing is the money. That is the sticking point and the difficulty that we have. This bill, as it is currently constructed, is $80 billion above the budget caps. In the 6 years since the budget caps passed, we have been unwilling to raise those. But we have a larger problem. We have a $20 trillion debt. Our deficit is close to $700 billion. It has no prospect of going down anytime soon. At the same time, we have other needs. During this debate, we focused like a laser on armed services and the needs of national security and our troops, as well we should. Those needs are incredibly important. I don't doubt that for a second. But you have to look at the whole or we are not going to be able to meet the needs of our national security and our troops. The amount of revenue that we take in as a country, unsurprisingly, impacts--or should impact--the amount of money that we can spend. We are having this debate now. We are talking about how underfunded the military is and how badly we need to shore up our readiness. I agree with all that. The rest of this week we are going to figure out how to make sure that our government takes in trillions of dollars in less money. That is wildly inconsistent.…”