Quotes About Government Programs

#1. One of the hardest areas is duplication; everyone knows there's lots of duplication in government. But when you ask someone, 'OK, name two programs that are duplicative,' typically there's a long pause.

James Lankford

#2. Government aid programs have been endlessly expanded, and the government has sought to maximize the number of people willing to accept handouts ... Roughly half of all Americans are dependent on the government, either for handouts, pensions, or paychecks.

James Bovard

#3. A national government using New Deal programs and the massive defense spending beginning with World War II and continuing through the Cold War was Johnson's vehicle for expanding the Southern economy and making it, as he hoped, one of the more prosperous regions of the country.

Robert Dallek

#4. Let's be honest about this; the liberal agenda with failed stimulus plans and government entitlement programs is crippling our economy and our quality of life.

Alveda King

#5. Pugsley's First Law of Government: All government programs accomplish the opposite of what they are designed to achieve.

John Pugsley

#6. Every effort needs to be made to try and offset the costs of Katrina and Rita by reductions in other government programs, especially those that are wasteful, duplicative and ineffective.

Ben Bernanke

#7. Unchecked, government social programs are a security threat because they weaken the ultimate line of defense: the free-born citizen whose responsibilities are not subcontracted to the government.

Mark Steyn

#8. Evidence is mounting that faith-based service programs are often more successful than other programs in correcting social problems. [It is wrong] for government to demand that religious nonprofits gut precisely that part of their program [funded through tax dollars] that makes them so effective.

Ronald J. Sider

#9. Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there.'

William Julius Wilson

#10. As more people rely on government programs, the harder it becomes to conduct the necessary reforms to preserve them to help our society's most vulnerable.

Jim DeMint

#11. I'm going to give away a lot more than half my money. I'd be happy to give that to the government if the government put together programs that were like I'm giving away to charity, in which I believe the money is effectively used to help people.

Ray Dalio

#12. We need to have mentoring programs energized by government, paid for by government, but who exist not because of government. Teen Challenge is a way to get people off drugs and alcohol. Teen Challenge is a faith-based program that changes people's hearts.

George W. Bush

#13. Many health care providers, particularly physicians in rural and urban areas, are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates.

Ron Wyden

#14. How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion.

Molly Ivins

#15. I was reading about all of these medical and psychological experimental programs that the government and various intelligence agencies had run throughout the 20th century. Any book you can read on that, there's some really horrifying and fascinating stuff that goes on there.

Caitlin Kittredge

#16. Government income redistribution programs produce the same result as theft. In fact, that's what a thief does; he redistributes income. The difference between government and thievery is mostly a matter of legality.

Walter E. Williams

#17. Free enterprise has done more to reduce poverty than all the government programs dreamed up by Democrats.

Ronald Reagan

#18. Government welfare programs contribute to the disintegration of poor families. They make women and children dependent on government; dependent for food, for clothing, for shelter; and reward fatherless families with extra benefits and welfare perks.

Hans F. Sennholz

#19. Americans must either choose big government and be willing to pay for and submit to it, or they must move toward smaller, less intrusive government and be willing to enjoy fewer government programs.

Oliver DeMille

#20. Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don't want to be a colony in a nation.

Richard M. Nixon

#21. After investigating the government for more than two decades and authoring books on its secret programs, it's been my experience that the government does whatever the hell it wants, whenever the hell it wants, and justifies it later.

Anonymous

#22. My great objective as a parliamentarian was to dramatise the deficiencies and devise practical government programs to deal with them. It was a cause that went to the heart of our way of life.

Gough Whitlam

#23. The distinction between reality and fiction in America seems like it is becoming really blurry. With its religious fanaticism, reality TV programs and fake news broadcasts being aired by the government, the States feel like they are entering the Dark Ages.

Dana Schutz

#24. A politician who commends himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to do good with other peoples' money.

P. J. O'Rourke

#25. Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty, to help build a strong middle class, to help educate our kids, and to make our lives better than all the programs of government combined.

Mitt Romney

#26. People were tired of wasteful government programs and welfare chiselers; and they were angry about the constant spiral of taxes and government regulations, arrogant bureaucrats, and public officials who thought all of mankind's problems could be solved by throwing the taxpayers' dollars at them.

Ronald Reagan

#27. Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream. And our current government programs, offer at best only a partial solution. They help people deal with poverty, but they do not help them escape it.

Marco Rubio

#28. There has never been a period in American history when it made sense to be anti-government. We may not like certain elected officials, laws, or government programs; but government simply provides the framework with which the people provide order and necessities for themselves.

Michael Douglas Gilbert

#29. The rationale for the vast network of government welfare programs as well as regulation and control over private enterprise is based on the socialist analysis of the market economy.

Richard Ebeling

#30. The economic welfare of all our people must ultimately stem not from government programs, but from the wealth created by a vigorous private sector.

Ronald Reagan

#31. I believe in infrastructure, I believe in investing in your hard assets. Where I think government starts to fail is when it starts getting itself weighed down with the social programs. And I think the American public just feels like a lot of that money is tossed aside and wasted.

Mick Cornett

#32. The debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

Noam Chomsky

#33. And the whole mess had been made possible by middle America's relentless appetite - for bigger houses, bigger portfolios, bigger government programs, bigger everything, and damn the long-term cost.

Ross Douthat

#34. One American in seven has no coverage, and one in three younger than sixty-five will lose coverage at some point in the next two years. These are people who aren't poor or old enough to qualify for government programs but whose jobs aren't good enough to provide benefits either.

Atul Gawande

#35. In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.

Fareed Zakaria

#36. Ironically, in the full-fledged transfer society, where governments busy themselves redistributing income by means of hundreds of distinct programs, hardly anyone is better off as a result.

Robert Higgs

#37. I'm very, very concerned about the Bush presidency. I'm worried about the kinds of cuts in domestic programs that mean something to a lot of people, including members of my family, who depend on certain things from the government.

Sarah Jessica Parker

#38. Our earliest evidence of government, in the ruins of Babylon and Egypt, shows nothing but ziggurats and pyramids of wasted taxpayer money, the TARP funds and shovel-ready stimulus programs of their day.

P. J. O'Rourke

#39. We need a grassroots movement and government policies and programs to change the food landscape and the built environment to give our children a chance to have happy, healthy successful lives.

Mark Hyman

#40. Indigenous programs and policy will come within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet because Indigenous policy and programs should not be an add - on, they should not be an afterthought, but they should be at the heart of a good Australian Government.

Yitzhak Rabin

#41. The measure of a man is not how great his faith is, but how great his love is. We must not let government programs disconnect our souls from each other.

J. C. Watts

#42. But people that are worried about unborn babies are the same ones that vote against kindergarten programs in Indiana or school lunch funds out of the federal government.

Birch Bayh

#43. I always felt that the problems of the world would never ever be solved until people came to terms with the deeper issues [spiritual] - that there would be an aimless reshuffling of world leaders and governments and programs.

Woody Allen

#44. We have two programs dealing with bulletproof vests, two different systems of actually distributing bulletproof vests from the federal government. Two sets of applications, two different sets of personnel to approve those applications.

James Lankford

#45. While I can see how the government has, at times, wasted taxpayers' money, and I can admit that too often its programs are ineffective, I also can see the good that government does.

Tony Campolo

#46. My government will make efforts to realize the farming potential of rain-fed and dry land areas by ensuring healthy participation by all stakeholders and convergence of various government sponsored programs.

Pratibha Patil

#47. It's traditionally not federal policy to fund state and local salaries. It's done sometimes on a temporary basis or a grant basis. But it's not often done. And the reason is clear, because the federal government can't continue in perpetuity these programs.

Jim Talent

#48. Government can't completely take care of people by making a bunch of promises and programs. Organize your communities

Neil Young

#49. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis.

Bernie Sanders

#50. Well as programs like the GI Bill that made a college education available to millions, government

Barack Obama

#51. We believe that only government has the capacity
not to mention the political and moral responsibility
to promote the general welfare.
Father Kramer as quoted in Sweet Charity?

Janet Poppendieck

#52. We must reign in overspending by ridding government of outmoded programs, making Big Oil pay their fair share, repealing massive tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas, and enacting a tax code that no longer favors millionaires and billionaires.

Paul Tonko

#53. History has repeatedly shown that the costs of many government healthcare programs far exceed early projections.

Rick Scott

#54. The great allure of government programs in general for many people is that these programs allow decisions to be made without having to worry about the constraints of prices, which confront people at every turn in a free market.

Thomas Sowell

#55. The only things that are immortal in this world are government programs and cancer cells in petri dishes.

Jim Babka

#56. The government does things like insisting that all encryption programs should have a back door. But surely no one is stupid enough to think the terrorists are going to use encryption systems with a back door. The terrorists will simply hire a programmer to come up with a secure encryption scheme.

Kevin Mitnick

#57. Our Government is committed to pursuing policies and programs which facilitate a further lowering of the interest rates in order to fuel investment and growth. We call on the commercial banks to partner with us in this effort.

Said Musa

#58. Everything is temporary. Well, except government programs.

Brooke Bida

#59. There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money.

P. J. O'Rourke

#60. Incentives aren't the only thing that matter for economic growth. Opportunity is also crucial, and extreme inequality deprives many people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and government programs that reduce inequality can make the nation as a whole richer by reducing that waste.

Paul Krugman

#61. People say, 'I'm for job training. We can train people to increase the likelihood that they can be self-sufficient.' Okay, that's great, you're for job training - I like job training - but do you think the federal government should have 163 different job-training programs?

Steve Largent

#62. Taking money from job creating entrepreneurs and giving it to ever-failing government programs has to be the ultimate in economic illiteracy.

James Cook

#63. Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition ...

Mitch McConnell

#64. The Republican name used to be synonymous with limiting the size and scope of government, and we need to re-establish that reputation. We must work to eliminate government waste, make certain taxpayer dollars go to meaningful programs, and leave resources directly with the people.

Tim Walberg

#65. Take Hispanic voters. They favor Democrats because they like the party's programs, from health care reform to government spending on education. It's not because the Republicans don't have a big enough Office of Hispanic Outreach.

Gail Collins

#66. If we think that democracy is a good thing, then we must believe that the public should know as much as possible about what the government it elects is doing. Snowden has said that he made the disclosures because "the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.

Peter Singer

#67. I think so many of our educators, when they hear about these programs coming from the federal government, they're just thinking, 'Uh, that's another book of paperwork that I'm going to have to do,' and teachers are so weighed down with that.

Marsha Blackburn

#68. Let me make this very clear: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, our digital exhaust is being sucked up by the government. It is being compiled on big server farms and it's being analyzed by different computer programs, looking for any hint that you and I are up to no good.

Brad Thor

#69. You know, Floridians, we've paid into Social Security. Like a lot of other government programs, we sent money to D.C. We expect to get that money back. We expect that our Social Security is real. So, we have to fix Social Security.

Rick Scott

#70. Look at government programs for the past fifty years. Every single one - except warfare - achieved the exact opposite of its announced goal.

Peter Drucker

#71. And some of what we're doing in Government even now, some of the welfare reform programs that are helping lone mothers come into work are based on things that were very new under the Labour Government in the eighties.

Patricia Hewitt

#72. There's a smokestack on the back of every government program.

Milton Friedman

#73. [A]ffirmative action in the United States has made blacks ... who have largely lifted themselves out of poverty, look like people who owe their rise to affirmative action and other government programs.

Thomas Sowell

#74. Getting the government to put money into social programs run by religious institutions is a practice that started during the Clinton years, when Bill Clinton advocated the AmeriCorps program.

Tony Campolo

#75. In Michigan, a liberal democrat raised taxes and kept their government programs at the same level. And guess what? Their economy continued into the toilet, it continued down.

Rick Perry

#76. There is a lot of waste in government-run programs generally, and a lot of waste and fraud and misuse of money in Medicare and Medicaid that can be saved.

Chuck Grassley

#77. While the political debate over abortion will continue for a very long time, the federal government can and should be doing more to support programs and services that provide women with better options.

Tim Ryan

#78. I often quote Ronald Reagan, who is pretty close to my favorite President ever, I will have to say that, but one of my favorite remarks he ever made was that when you look at Federal programs, there is nothing so close to eternal life on Earth as a Federal Government program.

Marsha Blackburn

#79. You know something is wrong when the government declares opening someone else's mail is a felony but your internet activity is fair game for data collecting.

E.A. Bucchianeri

#80. [T]he vast regulatory structure the federal government has erected in the name of the commerce power cannot be ended overnight, in many cases, but the pretense that such programs are constitutional can be ended, even as the programs themselves are phased out over time.

Roger Pilon

#81. Again and again, universities have put a low priority on the very programs and initiatives that are needed most to increase productivity and competitiveness, improve the quality of government, and overcome the problems of illiteracy, miseducation, and unemployment.

Derek Bok

#82. The government can reasonably rely on debt ratings when it forms programs to lend money to buyers of otherwise unattractive debt instruments.

Seth Klarman

#83. As in the case of California, the wolf is at the door of America and the present administration acts as if it's a pussycat. America cannot maintain the present entitlement programs and support a government this size and keep on living on a credit card.

Charlie Daniels

#84. After-school tutoring programs, care for the elderly, shelters for the homeless, disaster relief work, and a variety of other services would all benefit from government funding.

Tony Campolo

#85. When it comes to federal programs, even if states are discriminating, the federal government should not.

Evan Wolfson

#86. I saw what government programs were and how they were executed. In some cases, they were executed beautifully, but in others, there was tremendous waste.

Gwynne Shotwell

#87. We do participate in the government programs, like probably 95 percent of farmers do. People who aren't familiar with the agriculture industry, you know, try and make that look like something exceptional.

Vicky Hartzler

#88. We need to make sure our government programs encourage work, not dependence.

Marco Rubio

#89. If you don't like the idea that most of the money spent on lottery tickets supports government programs, you should know that most of the earnings from mutual funds support investment advisors' and mutual fund managers' retirement.

Robert Kiyosaki

#90. What Clinton severed with his welfare reform was the obligation of the federal government to step in when the states failed and to monitor these programs.

Robert Scheer

#91. It is the tendency of Government to grow, for practices and programs to become the nearest thing to eternal life we'll see on this earth.

Ronald Reagan

#92. Lower taxes, less government spending on domestic programs and fewer regulations mean a better economy for everybody.

Larry Elder

#93. We have in this country a federal government that increasingly is engaged in trying to determine which business, which regions, which industries will succeed, which will not through a whole range of economic development, regional development corporate subsidization programs.

Stephen Harper

#94. We need to understand the more government spends, the more freedom is lost ... Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all.

Ron Paul

#95. [The US] budget is dominated by the retirement programs, Social Security and Medicare - loosely speaking, the post-cold-war federal government is a big pension fund that also happens to have an army.

Paul Krugman

#96. Once we realize that government doesn't work, we'll know that the only way to improve government is by reducing its size - by doing away with laws, by getting rid of programs, by making government spend and tax less, by reducing government as far as we can.

Harry Browne

#97. It is the government's strong desire to empower this fabric, this social fabric of our society where faith-based programs large and small feel empowered, encouraged, and welcomed into changing lives.

George W. Bush

#98. Any Federal official, who engages in employment discrimination, lacks the moral integrity to evenhandedly enforce our Nation's laws or manage Federal programs.

Tanya Ward Jordan

#99. To finance 'entitlement' programs, the government threatens force against the taxpayers who provide the money. Why are people who favor compulsion called humanitarians, while those who favor freedom are stigmatized as greedy?

John Stossel

#100. By adopting programs to distribute substantial amounts of income, a nation guarantees that its government will become more powerful and invasive in other ways.

Robert Higgs