Political Quotes

“Madam President, I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you what has been keeping me awake, and I am sure, if I explain it well enough, it will keep you awake as well. Misery loves company. This is misery that is going to affect your future, and the Senate has to make some changes to have a future for this country. For 14 years, I was the only accountant in the Senate. I have been joined by Senator Johnson of Wisconsin, who is an accountant, and these kinds of numbers always bother us a little bit. I have put together a couple of pie charts here. This one on the left represents the spending we are doing; the one on the right represents the revenue we are receiving to do the spending. These are proportionately correct. This is the spending; this is the revenue to do the spending. Dramatically different. The revenues are dramatically lower. There are a number of pieces to this that I think probably will reveal more. The spending, incidentally, is $3.456 trillion. We are spending $3.456 trillion. We are taking in $2.2 trillion. That is $1.3 trillion less than we are spending. So we are spending a third more than we are taking in. How long can you do that? There is no end in sight. What is that made up of? Well, one of the things we worry about is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I have the revenues represented here for Social Security and other social insurances, and we are taking in $865 billion a year to support these programs.…”