Barack Obama

“ There are simple ways not of increasing taxes, which is the first thing that you'll here whenever taxes are discussed by the Republicans, but deferring or putting off tax breaks that are currently projected to be provided to some of the wealthiest Americans. We could right now eliminate tax cuts that are going disproportionately to people making 200,000 dollars a year or more. In fact, most of the beneficiaries make over a million dollars. That would raise 50 billion dollars that immediately could go to paying for Katrina relief. ”

“ We could defer 10 billion dollars of spending for a mission to Mars. I grew up loving the space program and I hope that at some point we land a man or woman on Mars, but right now we can't afford it and investing 10 billion dollars may not be the best way to do it. There's several billion dollars of business subsidies that we could eliminate. ”

“ Americans are extraordinarily generous, but they don't like to see their money wasted. And so, in discussions this week on the floor, I'm going to be proposing that we make certain that no-bid contracts are re-bid and that, in fact, we make sure that we've got some sort of accounting mechanism so that the money that is being spent is actually going to the people who need it. ”