Political Quotes

“the conference report on the budget continues the fiction begun by the 1993 budget agreement passed on a tie vote last summer. That fiction, perpetrated by this budget, is that the deficit problem was fixed last summer and Congress and the President are off the hook. It is because the Congress and the President refuse to deal with the deficits that loom on the horizon that I will vote against the conference report on the budget. I will briefly review what I see as the problem we face with respect to this conference report and the looming deficits. First, and most disappointingly, the conference report contains only half the modest Exon-Grassley cuts included in the Senate-passed version of the budget. In effect, the refusal to make these minuscule cuts assert that the Federal Government spends money so efficiently and effectively that it cannot afford reducing expenditures by three tenths of 1 percent over the next 5 years. Clearly, that is a ridiculous assertion given the fact that the economy is growing at such a pace as to reignite fears of inflation. If the economy is at the point of overheating, reducing Federal spending would certainly help both the budget deficit and the inflation outlook. In other words, now is the time to cut spending even more than is embodied in the Exon-Grassley amendment. Ducking this issue now while the economy is growing will only make it harder in the future.”