Robert C. Byrd

Unless the automatic sequester process is restored, I fear that any significant deficit reduction will have to await January 1989 and the inauguration of a new President.

What I am saying is that we have to hold the gun at the temples of both the President and the Congress. And to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, may I emphasize that they should be aware that the gun is there not just at the temple…

The administration wants to stand tall, Mr. President, but they are wearing borrowed boots.

In 5 short years, we have frittered away an international credit position built up over more than six decades. And we have little to show for it. It has been a case of billions for the present and not a penny for the future.

How can we have national security without economic security? Without any national debate, without a thought for tomorrow, we have borrowed billions that our children must repay.

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet, and a filibuster by any other name is still a filibuster.

If this is the kind of record that the administration wishes to run on in next year's election, a record of stall, obstruction, delay, filibuster, veto threats, and vote "No," then that is for the administration to judge. But the American…

The jobs that are being created are not the jobs that are higher paying, the jobs in the smokestack industries, the jobs in the strong manufacturing and industrial base of this country, but they are service jobs.

Trust has to be earned through integrity. And trust, like man's soul, once gone, never returns.

It is not possible to legislate integrity, good faith, comity, among the branches of Government. It is not possible to legislate high character. No one can write mutual trust into a statute.

The perception is that we who go out and have to raise these sums of money are beholden to the special interests. It is time to put a stop to it.

How many people out there in the country truly believe that this is a representative government? How many of them believe that they are represented fairly and evenhandedly? How many of them believe that they have an even chance with the…

This is no criticism of PAC's or people who work with PAC's or these individuals who contribute large sums. This is the system. That is what we have to live with and if we ever are to clean it up, we have to clean it up while we are living…

I believe that Mr. Bork is entitled to a judgment by this full court-right here.

We have a responsibility in our day, Mr. President, to reinvigorate that spirit that moved our forefathers to write the Constitution. Theirs was a vision that we, in our day, should seek to perpetuate for those future generations who are…

Mr. President, I have said before and I say again that the Senate of the United States was one of the great foundation stones, if not the principal foundation stone, of our constitutional system.

We all share a responsibility to present to our children a better nation than we inherited from our parents.

The debate over the budget and the deficit is really a debate about the future. What kind of Nation will we leave to our children?

I hope that the President's speech Friday will recognize that we do not have an economic right-indeed any right-to saddle future generations with a mountain of debt.

We have tried, and will continue to try to build bipartisanship in forming consensus on our foreign policies; that is the only way the United States can proceed in a dangerous world.

The American people know there is no tooth fairy. They want a serious debate about America's future and what we need to do to keep America No. 1.

Mr. President, it took a long time to build this country and it has been built out of the blood and treasure of the American people-people of all races, all religions, people of many origins.

No one likes to pay taxes, but to assert that America can keep on borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and spending our way into debt and that all will be well is a fundamental dishonesty. A great nation must be willing to pay some price…

It is time to tear up our national credit card, and it is time for some truth in budgeting.

I know a lot of Senators are opposed to this budget for fundamental reasons, basic good reasons in their own viewpoint, but we are going to have to face up to the fact that we have serious problems in this country and that we need each…