Political Quotes

“It is interesting because my colleague from South Dakota mentioned this figure, this two point some trillion dollars. People in Wyoming last week said: How do they come up with that number? Like the Senator, I agree that for every $1 they want to increase the debt limit, they should say we should find $1 of real savings, honest savings, savings you can point to, as the Senator needed to do as Governor, and as we believe here. That is what the approach they are dealing with in the House does. They have come up with a way to raise the debt ceiling, deal with avoiding a default, and they extend this for a number of months. People say: Well, how do you get this $2.4 trillion number? The President had a White House press conference last week, on July 22, and he said--it is astonishing. The President of the United States told the country: The only bottom line that I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013. Not extend the debt ceiling so we can avoid default, not so we can focus on jobs and the economy and the overall debt and the spending, but so that--as he said, his bottom line, the only bottom line, is that we have to extend it beyond the next election. Then the Treasury Secretary was on one of the television shows on July 24, and he said: Most important, we have to lift this threat of default . . . for the next 18 months. We have to take that threat off the table through the election. . . . This debt is the threat.…”