Chaka Fattah Quotes

Our national finances are in a ruinous state.

This debt crisis coming to our country. The wall and tidal wave of debt that is befalling our nation. Medicare and Social Security go bankrupt within ten years, we have a debt that is looming so high that in the last year of President Obama's budget just the interest payments on our debt is $916 billion dollars.

Restore, without delay, the equilibrium between revenue and expenditures, which has done so much to destroy our credit and derange the whole fabric of government. If that should not be done, the government and country will be involved, ere long, in overwhelming difficulties.

It is impossible, financially and politically, to lower expenditure to the level of our revenues in the calamitous times in which we live, and so, however painful and afflicting the idea may be, we must exist from day to day and simply await the outcome of events yet in the making …

The outlook for the Federal budget is bleak.

We campaigned on the fact that we were going to have to take difficult decisions because of the state of the public finances. When we got into government we discovered that actually the public finances were in an even worse state than we thought.

The Prime Minister in the UK thinks spending and borrowing more is the right thing to do in the circumstances, and is busily trying to bail out chunks of the private sector which would otherwise have to adjust more quickly to the painful reality that we have been living beyond our means.

Slow growth and inflation have a tendency to accompany large deficits and increasing debt as a percentage of GDP.

For me, there will be no enemies but unemployment, the deficit, excessive debt, economic stagnation and anything else that keeps our country in these critical circumstances.

We're on the verge of a financial collapse unless we balance the budget, and that means some really, really tough decisions.

I think we're going to have some difficulty in front of us. I have absolutely no doubt the next three, four years Europe are going to be at best stagnation. We are preparing for tough times.

We have mountain of debt that isn't going away and all the problems are here to stay, and anybody who tells you that is a good thing ought to get out of the business of helping the government down the road.

When you take a look at the problems our country is facing, debt is No. 1. The math is downright scary and the credit markets aren't going to keep on giving us cheap rates.

When you look what is happening in this country with the debt, the deficit, the CBO coming out and saying once again we're going to have a trillion dollar plus deficit in 2012, the fourth straight year, and unemployment may be going back up to 8.9 or maybe nine percent by the end of the year, these are serious situations that are going.

Madame Deficit

I've been Secretary of the Treasury for 147 days, and in that 147 days I've written $133 billion worth of hot checks.

The public understands that the government is broke, but many still don't want to cut programs they enjoy or depend on.

America's fiscal future is frightening.

Deficit, deficit, deficit. The political and media elites are obsessed with the D-word.

Now, 'the fiscal cliff' is a name that the media came up with, but some of us have been saying for years, 'You have got to stop the out of control federal spending, or you will end up at this point.' We're there.

I think the recovery hasn't been stronger because the hole that was dug for President Obama by the Bush administration was far worse than anybody could imagine, first of all.

The Obama administration's large and sustained increases in debt raise the specter of another financial crisis and large future tax increases, further chilling business investment and job creation.

Look, I don't dispute that the deficit has increased.

Civil servants are fully aware of the challenges the British economy faces. They are, after all, working tirelessly and professionally to support the coalition government through the current challenges, every day, and in every part of Britain.

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