Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to recognize our Special Order hour not only to talk a drop about the budget plans we had this week, but more importantly, this is an hour to honor organized labor in this country and what organized labor has done for the middle class and for so many millions and millions of people across this country. This week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus put the Back to Work budget before this body. The Back to Work budget is based on a simple concept: the number one problem facing this country is not the deficit, it's the need to improve the economy and create jobs, and the single best way you can address the deficit is to get people back to work. The Back to Work budget did just that. It would have created 7 million jobs, it would have brought unemployment down to 5 percent within 3 years, and it still would have trimmed $4.4 trillion from the deficit. What it did is it invested directly in the very things that create jobs--in infrastructure, in police and fire, and in teachers and in other services that are vital to this country--because we've been told by the Congressional Budget Office, the single entity that is a nonpartisan agency that both parties rely heavily on, that this year one-half of our deficit is caused by economic weakness, and three- quarters of the deficit in 2014 is caused by economic weakness. Now, what is economic weakness? That means unemployment and underemployment.…”