Jim Costa Quotes
The financial report makes it very clear that if we got into honest budgeting today, that in fact we would find ourselves with a much larger deficit than we have today.
Costa, Jim. Remarks. Congressional Record, Government Publishing Office, 14 Feb. 2006, p. H251.
After the Stock Market crash of 1929, Republican politicians promised "recovery is right around the corner." But La Guardia disagreed:
An unusual feature of the American governmental budgeting process is that Congress has passed a law limiting the amount of debt that the United States can maintain. When there is deficit financing, the law limiting the debt has to be changed periodically as the nation approaches the debt limit. Partisan politicians often take advantage of the fact that the debt limit must be passed and hold the passage hostage to obtaining something they want. The reality is that when Congress passed the previous budgets, they determined what the debt would have to be later. So they have already voted to exceed the budget ceiling. But the requirement of doing it in a second forum allows more pressure to be placed on the administration and the other party’s Congress members. While this process is ongoing, many people in the world are worried and often terrorized by the prospect of the debt ceiling not being passed, in which case the United States would have to default on its obligations—not pay interest, contractors, retirements, salaries, etc. Hence the admonition that the debt ceiling should never be a part of the budget negotiating process by most responsible statesmen and women. But the mist partisan of the politicians want to play politics with the debt ceiling precisely because the stakes are so high and they can get both headlines and leverage.
In 1964 the treasury secretary asked the president how to sell the proposed budget to Congress:
This position angered the extreme conservatives and the extreme liberals who both opposed him in 2012. However, the majority of the state supported him and he was elected on this middle of the road platform with most of the activists against him.
James Manuel Costa /ˈkɒstə/ ComM is the U.S. Representative for California's 16th congressional district. Serving as a Democrat in Congress since 2013, he previously represented California's 20th congressional district from 2005 to 2013. The district includes most of Fresno. He previously served in the California State Assembly from 1978 until 1994, and in the State Senate from 1994 until 2002. At the time of his election to the California State Legislature, he was the youngest member of the legislature at the age of 26. During his time in the California State Assembly, he served as the Majority Caucus Chair. Costa was chair of the Blue Dog Coalition and ranking member of the United States House Agriculture Subcommittee on Rural Development, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture.
