Political Quotes

“Mr. President, before I start talking a bit about the budget of my friend Senator Lee, I want to respond to the comments of the Senator from Iowa in terms of interest rates. Instead of talking about student rates, let me talk a little about America's average borrowing cost. Certainly, what I have done is delved into the budget and taken a look at the history, and from 1970 to 1999--over that 30-year period--the average borrowing cost in the United States was 5.3 percent. By the way, that was when America was a far more creditworthy nation, when our debt-to-GDP ratio ranged from about 40 percent to 67 percent. Now our debt-to-GDP ratio is over 100 percent. Over the last 3 years our average borrowing cost has been kept artificially low, at 1.5 percent. So my concern is by not seriously addressing the problem, by not actually passing a real budget that starts reining in the growth in government, we are going to go from that 1.5 percent and revert back to that average mean borrowing cost of 5.3 percent. If we do, that 3.8-percent differential would add $600 billion to $700 billion per year to America's interest expense, and that would crowd out 60 to 70 percent of all discretionary spending. That is the interest rate that I am concerned about. That is the day of reckoning I am concerned about, when global investors look at the United States and say: You know what. We are not going to loan you any more money.…”