Kent Conrad Quotes (71 Quotes)

If you are not able to pay down the debt, that means that the federal government is in competition with private-sector borrowers for money, driving up the costs of interest rates and that's a hidden tax on every American family -- higher mortgage payments, higher car payments, higher college loan payments,

When I went to Roosevelt grade school in Bismark, North Dakota, if you reduced spending by 39 and you reduced your income by 70, you were deeper in the hole, ... You've added to the deficit. You haven't reduced it.

Welfare reform happened with reconciliation; half the Democrats voted for it. The Bush tax cuts happened with reconciliation; twelve Democratic Senators voted for it. You didn't have a real partisan issue on those times that it was used.

The president's plan will give you a little boost and then look straight down, ... In fact, past 2004 it's worse than doing nothing.

It is important that we have strong, farmer-friendly leadership at FSA, ... We must fill the void quickly so there is no disruption in the critical services FSA provides to our agriculture communities.

The request for an additional 18 billion for 2002 for defense would just make this situation worse, and I told the secretary of defense I believe they have an affirmative obligation to come up with a way of paying for this,

This nation is about to be hit with a tidal wave of new retirees. In just six years, the baby boomers will begin to retire. The demands on Social Security and Medicare will be dramatically increased, ... This is no time to divert Social Security and Medicare funds to other purposes.

He's highly intelligent. He has strong credentials. He is a conservative, but I think he is mainstream conservative,

He has given me his word on important matters.

He has the right kind of demeanor to be a judge. He listens to others and is not dogmatic,

These growing deficits and debt threaten our nation's long-term economic security. As deficits climb, we are borrowing more and more money from Japan, China, and even South Korea. That makes us weaker,

It leaves out any war cost past September 30th of this year. It leaves out the cost of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax -- the old millionaires' tax that is rapidly becoming a middle-class tax trap,

The ground-breaking research that will be done right here in North Dakota will allow our grandchildren to drive hydrogen-powered cars, live in hydrogen-powered homes and end our country's addiction to foreign sources of energy.

I don't think giving enemy combatants access to the federal court system is a precedent we want to set,

You don't need some whole new unfettered access to individual tax returns of people or of companies in order to figure out how the IRS is spending its money,

As the news this morning of increased joblessness and earlier reports of exploding deficit and debt reveal, the president's economic policy is a disaster. Obviously, the secretary of the treasury and Mr. Lindsey are being sacrificed to protect the president. Sadly, the removal of these economic officials will do nothing if they are simply replaced with yes-men committed to the president's relentlessly partisan agenda of pushing tax cuts at the expense of all else.

I found him to be extraordinarily intelligent, and he has assured me that he brings no ideological agenda to the Supreme Court. He wants to be a justice for all of the people.

This confirms that the Bush economic plan is not working,

You think of what could be done here, ... Any agent of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee -- and they could designate anybody as an agent -- could go into IRS facilities anywhere in the country and get your tax returns.

It just jumps out at you that this notion hasn't worked out in the real world. And if it did work out, maybe we should eliminate all the taxes and balance the budget.

He has never felt there was a conflict between his own moral precepts and the precepts of his church and his role as a judge.