Chaka Fattah Quotes

When George W. Bush entered office, the national debt was $5 trillion. When he left, it was $10 trillion. I think the administration spent too much money.

The Republicans in the House and the Bush administration are bankrupting this country.

The party in power almost always unapologetically engages in deficit spending, while the other party argues passionately against the evils of debt and deficits.

Obama did inherit a deficit when he came into office. Why this fact justifies racking up vastly more debt and bigger deficits is a logical mystery.

The federal debt in this country is principally of Republican design.

I've criticized Republicans for their lack of fiscal discipline when they controlled Congress before 2007. However, that is no excuse to just continue with more of the same or, as the case is now, to make it worse. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's budget, we will double the national debt in five years and triple it in 10.

For the last 4 years, our Federal Government has produced the four biggest deficits in history, and the estimated 2006 deficit of $423 billion is projected to be the largest of all.

The cozy world we were told would go on forever, where full employment would be guaranteed by a stroke of the Chancellor’s pen, cutting taxes, deficit spending—that cozy world is gone.

The modern GOP has perfected this cyclical deficit outrage ritual. Republicans run up the tab when they control the White House, then scream about deficits when Democrats win - insisting that 'serious reform' means cutting only Democratic budget priorities.

The greatest threat to our national security is our debt. We borrow a million dollars a minute.

We have a debt the size of our economy, which makes us look a lot like Greece.

I want to share with the American people that President Bush and the Republican majority in just 4 years have borrowed $1.05 trillion from foreign nations. That is selling our country to other nations because of the spending that is going on.

We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.

The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.

The debt they ran up in the first year of the Obama administration is bigger than the last four years of the Bush combined.

The economic recession in America wasn't caused by bad luck; it was caused by bad Republican policies. But the Republican candidates are doubling down on the same flawed policies that led to the loss of 3.6 million jobs in the final months of 2008 and gravely affected middle class families across America.

My friend Paul Ryan talks about fiscal responsibility, but voted to put two wars on a credit card.

If we continue to allow the federal government to live beyond its means, we will all soon have to live beneath ours.

Reagan proved deficits don't matter.

It's the old Washington fiscal game of Jenga. You try to build as much debt as you can take, as much tax as you can take, until you topple the entire economy.

The American people want a balanced budget. They want Congress to stop this barbaric practice of perpetual deficit spending. It really, if you think about it, is a form of taxation without representation. We fought a war over that issue and we won that war.

Is bankrupting this great country the top priority of this administration?

Trillions of dollars are being spent in the name of 'saving' the economy: bailouts, 'stimulus,' omnibus spending bills, budgets, government takeovers of the auto, health care and energy industries, all of which require ever more spending.

After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.

The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That's the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to find a solution.