Earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people. This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington.
I think we're so addicted to bubble finance at the Fed that they can't get out of the corner they painted themselves into. I think the Fed is making federal debt so cheap that Congress has no interest, Washington has no incentive to ever face up to our massive fiscal gap that is going to grow, and grow as we go forward in time and so we have a paralyzed system.
As a president, we need a businessman who understands that business is not usual - someone who's not going to put up with business as usual in Washington, D.C. Having a businessman who's not going to put up with business as usual in Washington, D.C., is exactly what we need.
Peak oil is already upon us. It is destroying our banking system, that is, our system for marshalling capital, and that is about to put us out of business-as-usual. So, we have to carry on with business-not-so-usual. This could mean anything from your children finding careers in farming (rather than show biz or plastic surgery) to reorganizing households differently to traveling from New York to Boston by boat.
Our constituents did not send us to Washington to shut down the government. They sent us here to make it more accountable.
People are fed up. They are fed up with what's happening in Washington. They are fed up with both parties. They are fed up with politicians who have lied to them.
During the Reagan years, government shut down eight different times under a Democrat Congress. The president and Congress worked together and got things straightened out. Under the Carter years, again a Democrat Congress, the government shut down five times.
I remember being 18 and being fed up with everything - fed up with society, fed up with the political system, fed up with myself - and then you kind of go, 'Actually, this voting thing is amazing,' because you have a chance to change it, right?
Ever since I came to Congress in 1992, there are those who have been trying to silence my voice. I've been told to "sit down and shut up" over and over again. Well, I won't sit down and I won't shut up until the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people.
Ever since I came to Congress in 1992, there are those who have been trying to silence my voice. I've been told to 'sit down and shut up' over and over again. Well, I won't sit down and I won't shut up until the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people.
I believe we're at the verge of the greatest time to be alive in this world. But Washington is holding us back. How we tax, how we regulate. We're not embracing the energy revolution in our midst, a broken immigration system that has been politicized rather than turning it into an economic driver. We're not protecting and preserving our entitlement system or reforming for the next generation. All these things languish while we have politicians in Washington using these as wedge issues.
Of course, our immigration system isn't broken. The enforcement of our immigration system is broken. The president Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and several in the Republican Party are trying to break the immigration system. The system itself is not broken; it's just fine. It's just being ignored.
The people of Mississippi can't just go home, shut down their small business, shut down their restaurants, shut down their gyms... and just think that you can come back six weeks from now, flip a switch and everything's gonna be fine. That's not the way the economy works.
Our immigration system is not broken. We don't need, and Congress shouldn't enact, amnesty.
I was a brand new senator in 2013. And the idiocy of Congress was to shut the government down for two weeks in October. And coming out of that, the pressure was put on the budget chair, Paul Ryan's shoulders and Patty Murray. Conservative Wisconsin Republican, progressive Washington Democrat, come up with a budget deal.
Only Congress can treat the gaping wound that is our broken immigration system.