George Pataki Quotes
This Budget reflects a choice - not an easy choice, but the right choice. And when you think about it, the only choice. The choice to take the responsible, prudent path to fiscal stability, economic growth and opportunity.
Pataki, George. "Executive Budget Message." Albany, New York, 29 Jan. 2003.
The Clinton budget was a very unusual one. He and Treasury Sectary Robert Rubin determined that the large deficit built up in the previous administrations and the high interest rate were competing with the private sector for investment capital. Therefore the budget raised taxes and took other steps to reduce the largest deficit then in American History. Virtually all of the Republicans saw disaster for the economy with this budget and even some of the fiscal conservatives from Clinton’s own party were opposed. The budget passed by a single vote in the House, and that started the largest economic growth period in American History. The economy became so strong that Clinton was able to produce a balanced budget, eliminate the Reagan deficit and produce more new jobs than any administration in American history. The prediction that the budget would cause the country to fail was, not only wrong, but the budget caused the nation to succeed, beyond what any thought possible. See {626772} for one of the warnings from his own party.
This was a variation of the quotation of Canadian Minister of Finance, Jean Chretien, a decade earlier.
After many years of deficit financing, Clinton finally produced a balanced budget and together with his Secretary, of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, actually developed an economy which was producing a huge annual surplus that would soon eliminate the national debt. However, when George W. Bush replaced Clinton after two terms, Bush was unable to manage the budget any better than the other aspects of the Presidency. He cut taxes dramatically and even after it was clear that the Clinton surplus was squandered, he continued tax reductions and even increased them while increasing government spending creating the biggest government in history and went from our largest surplus to our largest deficit in his 8 years.
George Elmer Pataki is an American attorney and politician who served as the 53rd governor of New York (1995–2006). An attorney by profession, Pataki was elected mayor of his hometown of Peekskill, New York, and went on to be elected to the State Assembly and the State Senate. In 1994, Pataki ran for Governor of New York against three-term incumbent Mario Cuomo, defeating him by a margin of more than three points as part of the Republican Revolution of 1994. Pataki would himself be elected to three consecutive terms, and was the third Republican Governor of New York elected since 1923 (the other two were Thomas E. Dewey and Nelson Rockefeller). As of 2021, Pataki is the most recent Republican to hold any statewide office in New York.
