Quotes About Spending Cuts

“No politician or party favours waste and inefficiency, and every government tries to reduce both
but tax cuts on the promise of ending the gravy train almost never find enough gravy. Of course efficiency matters, waste must be attacked, and of course it matters how both taxes and spending are organized, but despite the highly publicized incidents of misspending that seem to dominate the pages of our mainstream media and disproportionately shape our perceptions, the numbers about waste never add up, and the consequences of tax cuts on public goods and services are always worse than promised.”

— Alex Himelfarb

“It appears that no one is so unfortunate that he or she is exempt from spending cuts, while at the same time no one is so fortunate as to be ineligible for a tax cut”

— Jonathan Schell

“Isn't Glen an accountant? We're all frugal." These days, by necessity.
"You might be frugal, but Glen is cheap. For Valentine's Day, he actually suggested that we go to a card shop, exchange cards in the aisle, then put them back because he didn't see the use in spending the money!"
"Okay, that's cheap."
Libby huffed. "I swear, if he cuts up my Bloomingdale's card, I'll cut off his pecker.”

— Stephanie Bond

“The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties that alternate in power in our governing institutions. It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on a par with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old.”

— Hendrik Hertzberg

“In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business. They know there is nothing a man in Washington can do to plug a hole a mile down in the gulf.
On the other hand, they demand that the president 'take control.' They demand that he hold press conferences, show leadership, announce that the buck stops here and do something. They want him to emote and perform the proper theatrical gestures so they can see their emotions enacted on the public stage.
They want to hold him responsible for things they know he doesn't control. Their reaction is a mixture of disgust, anger, longing and need. It may not make sense. But it doesn't make sense that the country wants spending cuts and doesn't want cuts, wants change and doesn't want change.”

— David Brooks

“The three policy pillars of this new era are familiar to us all: privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporate taxation, paid for with cuts to public spending.”

— Naomi Klein

“We must take away the government's credit card. With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts.”

— Alan Keyes

“I would not reconsider the nuclear cuts. The appropriations committee did due process in looking at where there was the ability to cut some spending and that's what we did and now it's time to look forward to fiscal year '12.”

— Joe Heck

“And I have to tell you as a grandmother, I worry about the fact that my grandchildren are going to be paying for all the spending, including military spending, that has gone on and the tax cuts that have come through.”

— Geraldine Ferraro

“To reduce deficit spending and our enormous debt, you reign in spending. You cut the budget. You don't take more from the private sector and grow government with it. And that's exactly what Obama has in mind with this expiration of Bush tax cuts proposal of his.”

— Sarah Palin

“It's wasteful spending like this that not only forces tax increases and cuts in vital services ... but also really make you wonder: who is City Hall looking out for?”

— Laura Miller

“My approach to cutting spending as president, is to do a ten percent across the board cut of all federal agencies, and then ask each of my new agency heads to find another ten percent by drilling down. That's what you do in business to come up with approximately 20 percent cuts for the first fiscal year budget.”

— Herman Cain

“You've got to either say you're going to cut taxes and find some spending cuts. I think we ought to reform long-term entitlement spending in the country, but you can't out of one side of your mouth say, 'Yes, we're for tax cuts, we're for spending discipline, and we're for bringing down the debt.'”

— Harold Ford, Jr.

“My Republican colleagues say, Let's do the cuts first. The Democrats say, Let's do spending first. I'd like to do both simultaneously.”

— Scott Rigell

“In Congress, while the House's proposed defense budget calls for significant increases, it also cuts 11 billion dollars from veterans spending - including healthcare and disability pay. Be clear: we can't equate spending on veterans with spending on defense.”

— Jennifer Granholm

“Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then, he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.”

— John Sununu

“It's not about what the speaker wants. It's not about necessarily what I want. There's two other principles involved here. It's what the constituents in my district want, and they didn't want to raise the debt ceiling unless there were significant structural reforms and spending cuts to help us balance our budget.”

— Tim Huelskamp

“Any politician that says no tax revenue or zero spending cuts does not deserve reelection. Our hole is so deep in this country with the debt and the debt service, the interest on that debt, before the big expenses come for Social Security and Medicare - for we baby boomers in a few years - that everything has to be on the table.”

— Douglas R. Oberhelman

“Whether it's threats to Medicare, cuts in education spending, or Internet privacy, the ramifications got young people out to vote and should be enough to keep them involved in our political system.”

— Patrick Murphy

“Look, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.”

— Alan Greenspan

“Much fiscal policy is implemented, not through spending increases, but through tax credits and other so-called tax expenditures. The markets should respond to them as they do spending cuts, with little contraction in economic activity.”

— Alan Greenspan

“Look, I am not worried about Washington cutting too much spending too fast. I mean, the kinds of spending cuts we're talking about just right now are $100 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget.”

— Paul Ryan

“Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America's global enemies sense a failure of will.”

— Ben Shapiro

“If you could bring to me a majority of people to say that we're going to have $10 of spending cuts for $1 of revenue enhancement, put me in, coach.”

— Jeb Bush

“If every country committed to spending 0.05 per cent of GDP on researching non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, that would cost $25 billion a year, and it would do a lot more than massive carbon cuts to fight warming and save lives.”

— Bjorn Lomborg

“The American people want us to stop spending. And so let's just give them some certainty. Let's extend the tax - the existing tax cuts. And then let's give some more tax breaks to small businesses and large. And then maybe the American people will have some confidence.”

— John McCain

“Will some reporter, or some Republican on the Sunday shows, please ask why tax cuts raid the non-existent Social Security Trust Fund but all the Democrats' new spending doesn't? Will someone please ask that?”

— Rush Limbaugh

“The President is destroying the fabric of America with a combined policy of war, tax cuts for the wealthy, and reductions in spending for domestic needs.”

— Charles B. Rangel

“We also must pull from our highest ideals of justice and protect against those ills that destabilized our economy - like predatory lending, over-leveraged financial institutions and the unchecked avarice of the past that trumped fairness and common sense. Our platform calls for significant cuts in federal spending.”

— Cory Booker

“I do not intend to dispute in any way the need for defence cuts and the need for government spending cuts in general. I do not share a not in my backyard approach to government spending reductions.”

— Stephen Harper

“Interest rate cuts have an effect in stimulating an economy by directly or indirectly making someone, somewhere, spend more than they otherwise would. That extra spending increases demand and ensures that we all carry on with work to do, without us having to slash our prices or our wrists.”

— Evan Davis

“If, before 2020, there is a choice between further spending cuts, more borrowing and tax rises, the priority must be to avoid tax increases. They would disrupt consumption, employment and investment.”

— Theresa May

“By making bold cuts in spending and commonsense entitlement reforms, we will make our government simpler, smaller, and smarter.”

— Mitt Romney

“Well, you have the public not wanting any new spending, you have the Republicans not wanting any new taxes, you have the Democrats not wanting any new spending cuts, you have the markets not wanting any new borrowing, and you have the economists wanting all of the above. And that leads to paralysis.”

— Michael Bloomberg

“If the US Government was a family-they would be making $58,000 a year, spending $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand.”

— Dave Ramsey

“When Obama's economic advisers - a greater group of schlemiels would be hard to find - warn that failure to raise the limit will trigger default and horrific consequences for the global economy, Republicans should reply that if this is so, tell it to your president and get him to approve the spending cuts along with the debt-limit increase.”

— Dick Morris

“Our approach is to reject the old vicious circle of the '80s-rising debt, higher long-term interest rates, higher debt repayment costs, lower growth, higher unemployment, then enforced cuts in public spending. That was the old boom and bust.”

— Gordon Brown

“It isn't as much you a spending problem as a priorities, and that is what the budget is, setting priorities. It's about timing. And it's about timing as to when make cuts, as well.”

— Nancy Pelosi

“Debt is not caused by spending, it is caused by buying things that you don't pay for. Or, it's caused by cutting revenues that you don't offset ... by cuts in spending.”

— Steny Hoyer

“The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government.”

— Bruce Bartlett

“[T]ax cuts are not just something that all taxpayers deserve, but also the best way to curb government spending. It is the best kind of tax reform. If the money never reaches the table, Congress can't gobble it up.”

— Zell Miller

“A federal bailout would spare California from having to make spending cuts needed to bring its budget into balance. The matter has become urgent since California voters rejected several tax-hiking ballot initiatives. Rather than taking the vote as a signal to dramatically curtail spending, the state turned to the feds. If they get a free pass, the politicians can avoid fixing any of their past mistakes or preparing California for the future.”

— Peter Schiff

“You can only win the 'war' with ideas, not with spending cuts”

— Klaus Kleinfeld

“We have to have structural entitlement reform, major spending cuts and not tax increase-retardants on economic growth to reverse our current course toward national bankruptcy, but Obama steadfastly remains on the wrong side of all these solutions.”

— David Limbaugh

“Only dramatic cuts in the federal deficit, a rollback of regulations that cripple small and community banks, a cancellation of future tax increase plans, a big reduction in federal spending, repeal of Obamacare, freeing manufacturing from the prospect of carbon taxation and unleashing out domestic energy potential can solve our problems. But Obama is not about to undo his legacy of disaster for the American people.”

— Dick Morris

“The sequestration is a bad idea, all around. It is something that is out of the question. If you have spending cuts, education of our children, other investments, on the National Institutes of Health, where you are hindering growth, you're no going to reduce the deficit.”

— Nancy Pelosi

“I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending. There will be no easy off ramps on this one.”

— Barack Obama

“Under current law, on January 1st, 2013, there is going to be a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases.”

— Ben Bernanke

“The best way to encourage economic vitality and growth is to let people keep their own money.When you spend your own money, somebody's got to manufacture that which you're spending it on. You see, more money in the private sector circulating makes it more likely that our economy will grow. And, incredibly enough, some want to take away part of those tax cuts. They've been reading the wrong textbook. You don't raise somebody's taxes in the middle of a recession. You trust people with their own money. And, by the way, that money isn't the government's money; it's the people's money.”

— George W. Bush

“I don't think Republicans will be fooled into taking this necessary spending and using it to oppose pro-growth tax cuts, using this tragedy and those deaths for his own political desires.”

— Grover Norquist