Federal Spending Quotes

#1. It seems that nearly every American either has a share of federal spending or has a close relative who does.

Trent Lott

#2. Every generation has an obligation to leave its children in a better position than it inherited. Our representatives in Washington are breaking faith with that covenant. America must reduce its federal spending and accumulation of debt for the sake of generations to come.

David Malpass

#3. After almost 50 years in which federal spending averaged about 20 percent of GDP, Joe Sestak and Nancy Pelosi took federal spending to 25 percent. You know, that's a 25 percent increase in the size of the government overnight. That's what we - that's what we've got to rein in.

Pat Toomey

#4. Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.

Mitt Romney

#5. Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.

Karl Rove

#6. Although federal revenues nearly doubled during the Reagan years, federal spending far exceeded that pace and drove the national debt from $909 billion to $2.6 trillion between 1980 and 1988, by far the highest it had ever been.

Douglas Brinkley

#7. In fact, entitlement spending on programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up 54% of federal spending, and spending is projected to double within the next decade. Medicare is growing by 9% annually, and Medicaid by 8% annually.

Jim Ryun

#8. Expose widespread waste and duplication in federal spending.

Tom Coburn

#9. 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.

Marsha Blackburn

#10. The Congressional Budget Office tells us that Medicare spending has increased fivefold in the past 42 years, dramatically more than all other categories of federal spending.

David Limbaugh

#11. For small businesses, you need less taxes, less federal spending, and you need less regulation that blocks their growth.

David Malpass

#12. Cut defense spending as part of cutting all federal spending.

Rand Paul

#13. the United States will need substantially more revenues to close the budget deficit, especially recognizing the need to increase federal spending in certain critical areas. I

Jeffrey D. Sachs

#14. Under the administration of George W. Bush, you will recall, federal spending grew pretty significantly. At the same time, the number of people directly employed by the federal government shrank. One of the factors that explained the difference was contracting.

Thomas Frank

#15. Federal spending is atrocious.

Jason Chaffetz

#16. I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign. In my opinion, it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#17. Ultimately, my proposal isn't intended to increase or decrease the amount of federal spending spent on antipoverty programs.

Marco Rubio

#18. Californians are worried about whether they will have a job along with ballooning federal spending and deficits.

Carly Fiorina

#19. The country is facing a fiscal crisis, and the United States Senate is at the center of the debate about how to bring federal spending under control.

Jeff Flake

#20. You know, it doesn't take a genius in the private sector to know that you can save literally hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending if you can make it more responsive. That's the main job.

Darrell Issa

#21. Redirect federal spending aimed at fulfilling the terms of the increasingly irrelevant Kyoto Protocol.

Stephen Harper

#22. The central question is whether Medicare and Medicaid should remain entitlement programs guaranteeing a certain amount of care, as Democrats believe, or become defined contribution programs in which federal spending is capped, as Republicans suggest.

Christina Romer

#23. Roll back federal spending to 2008 levels.

Rand Paul

#24. Whether it's called 'compassionate conservatism' or 'big government Republicanism,' after years of record increases in federal spending, more government is now the accepted Republican philosophy in Washington.

Mike Pence

#25. The federal government is far larger than the Founding Fathers ever intended it to be. We have racked up over $16 trillion of debt through wasteful spending, and it is time that we cut that waste and start reducing the size of our government.

Matt Salmon

#26. It is being alleged that the Federal Government is 'cutting' spending. In fact, we are not 'cutting' anything. Defense spending under this budget would rise by 4.3 percent over last year. Other discretionary spending would also rise.

Craig L. Thomas

#27. We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount and, on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.

Doug Elmendorf

#28. Medical research is needed, and I just saw there was a need for help that the government - state or federal - was not spending the taxpayers' money on helping people get through college.

Joe Jamail

#29. When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it.

Howard Warren Buffett

#30. For those of us who want to accomplish something for the country, we need to come up with a list ... of anti-spending reforms which are locked into place so we are dramatically lowering the appetite of the federal government over the future.

Mark Kirk

#31. I have a record as governor. I have a record of cutting spending. And I talked yesterday not only about we ought to cut spending, I talked about how we've cut spending in Mississippi and how if you did the same things in the federal government, you would save tens of billions of dollars a year.

Haley Barbour

#32. We are not spending the Federal Government's money, we are spending the taxpayer's money, and it must be spent n a way which guarantees his money's worth and yields the fullest possible benefit to the people being helped.

Richard M. Nixon

#33. The Federal Reserve and Congress have systematically taught the American people to trust the government and that caution in spending is harmful to the economy.

Ron Paul

#34. Stimulus spending, permanent bailouts, government takeovers, and federal mandates have all failed our nation. America's employers are afraid to invest in an economy racked with uncertainty over what Washington's next set of rules, regulations, mandates, and tax hikes will look like.

Geoff Davis

#35. This welfare for wealthy companies wastes taxpayer dollars, harms the environment, and makes a mockery of the recent reductions in federal social spending programs.

Ralph Nader

#36. We [Federal Government] have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.

Henry Morgenthau Jr.

#37. I continue to vote against such spending increases, but sometimes I think some of my Republican colleagues forgot that we were sent here to shrink the federal government, not to grow it.

Jeff Miller

#38. Aside from the poor example it sets, the federal government enables reckless spending on public-employee pensions by offering hope of assistance from Washington if things get bad enough.

Devin Nunes

#39. As quickly as you start spending federal money in large amounts, it looks like free money.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#40. The problem isn't a Congress that won't cut spending or a president who won't raise taxes. The problem is an American public with a bottomless sense of entitlement to federal money.

P. J. O'Rourke

#41. Spending time at the Federal Reserve was a good learning opportunity for me. It helped me to understand economic philosophies and polices that I had not previously known about.

Herman Cain

#42. We were endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We were not endowed by the Federal Government. We were not endowed by entitlements. We were not endowed by pork barrel spending; we were not endowed by budgetary earmarks.

Lawrence Kudlow

#43. It is inexcusable for the White House and Congress to not even make the effort to find at least some offsets to this new spending, ... No one in America believes the federal government is operating at peak efficiency and can't tighten its belt.

Tom Coburn

#44. Determining how many asbestos suits have been filed or how much companies have spent to resolve them is difficult. Cases are filed in state and federal courts, and many companies do not disclose their spending on settlements.

Alex Berenson

#45. The Concord Coalition in Virginia complained about pork projects and wasteful spending in the federal budget. Consider the Senate chaplain's salary. As occupations go, only mind readers in Los Angeles have fewer things to do all day.

Argus Hamilton

#46. Spending on programs such as national defense and funding the operating budgets of all federal agencies represent only 39 percent of our yearly budget, an all-time low.

Paul Gillmor

#47. You eventually have to figure out how to balance the books. So that's the reason I gave up my day job to come do this was to go fight to create the space where spending matches America's capacity to tax, and that means economic growth and a smaller, humbler federal government.

Mike Pompeo

#48. Class warfare or soaking the so-called rich may make for good populist demagoguery and serve the political ends of the governing masterminds, but it does nothing to solve the grave realities of the federal government's insatiable appetite for spending and its inability to reform itself.

Mark R. Levin

#49. 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

#50. Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-87): The worst financial investment I ever made was spending so much time in government. The most satisfying personal investment I ever made was spending so much time in government, frustrating as it could be.

Anonymous