Quotes About Government Spending

#1. Americans for Tax Reform is a national taxpayer organization dedicated to opposing any and all tax increases. We work at the national, state and local level for lower taxes, less government spending and limited government.

Grover Norquist

#2. Many conservatives were openly angry with the Bush administration over enormous government spending and the chaos in Iraq. I don't see as much independent thinking on the left, where President Obama is rarely criticized by his acolytes.

Bill O'Reilly

#3. The goal is to reduce the size and scope of government spending, not to focus on the deficit. The deficit is the symptom of the disease.

Grover Norquist

#4. Having said that, I believe we must not compound the natural disaster of Katrina by creating a fiscal disaster in Congress - it is our duty to ensure that we reign in other government spending in any event, and especially in this time of national emergency.

Chris Chocola

#5. Instead of the Government spending $400,000 on immunisation, we may get far better health outcomes if we spend $100,000 in some other way, on nutrition for example ... When you have an expenditure on getting your community healthier, then the resistance to many childhood diseases is stronger.

Michael Moore

#6. John Kerry's newfound interest in fiscal discipline is a political gimmick that defies his 20-year record in the Senate and stands in stark contrast to his reckless and expansive promises of new government spending on the campaign trail.

Steve Schmidt

#7. Social Security is not just another government spending program. It is a promise from generation to generation.

Hank Johnson

#8. If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a 'stimulus,' then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power.

Thomas Sowell

#9. 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

#10. We don't need more politicians insisting we have deficits because you're not taxed enough. Those deficits ballooned from an economy that didn't grow enough and from 50 years of government spending too much.

Ronald Reagan

#11. If credit expansion, protectionism, and government spending were a path to prosperity, mankind would have long ago created heaven on earth.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#12. The difference between them and us is that we want to check government spending and they want to spend government checks.

Ronald Reagan

#13. Republicans know that government spending creates jobs. They just want that spending to be funneled to their projects and districts ... and they certainly don't want to say it out loud.

Jennifer Granholm

#14. The idea that more taxes and more government spending is the best way to help hardworking middle class taxpayers - that's an old idea that's failed every time it's been tried.

Marco Rubio

#15. Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.

Arthur Laffer

#16. Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn't know much.

Will Rogers

#17. Increased government spending can provide a temporary stimulus to demand and output but in the longer run higher levels of government spending crowd out private investment or require higher taxes that weaken growth by reducing incentives to save, invest, innovate, and work.

Martin Feldstein

#18. How do you hold down government spending?

Milton Friedman

#19. Maryland needs someone in Congress who will fight to create jobs, stop out-of-control government spending and defend small businesses.

Andrew P. Harris

#20. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending - with the exception of the money spent on them.

Matt Taibbi

#21. We need transparency in government spending. We need to put each government expenditure online so every Floridian can see where their tax money is being spent.

Marco Rubio

#22. [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

#23. First rule in government spending: Why build one, when you can have two at twice the price?

Carl Sagan

#24. The same undisciplined government spending and social engineering that has undermined our economy over the past 30 years has also been tearing at the social fabric of this land.

Stockwell Day

#25. You're having government spending on the economy being cut almost everywhere. That means that the only source of spending for growth has to come from borrowing from the banking system.

Michael Hudson

#26. The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending.

Milton Friedman

#27. 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

#28. Here, too, we tend to be schizophrenic. We would all like to see government spending go down, provided it is not spending that benefits us. We would all like to see deficits reduced, provided it is through taxes imposed on others.

Milton Friedman

#29. Clinton's successor in the White House, George W. Bush, was committed to expanding government spending for faith-based initiatives.

Tony Campolo

#30. To win elections, politicians have promised practically endless government spending and covered up the cost, leaving generations of taxpayers obligated to pay off the debt. That's wrong, but neither the U.S. nor Europe has a plan to stop it.

David Malpass

#31. I think Bush has capitulated on affirmative action and government spending. Apart from that, he's OK, I guess. About the same as Howard Dean.

Peter Brimelow

#32. If we don't get a grip on government spending, there will be no growth.

George Osborne

#33. MoveOn loves government. It remains enamored of government spending as fuel for its liberal agenda; and anything that threatens to close that spigot in any degree is perceived as a dire threat - worthy of Chicken-Little warnings that the sky is going to fall.

Bob Barr

#34. The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

Thomas Sowell

#35. Instead of cutting waste, the Obama Administration is hurting workers. President Obama should stop protecting wasteful government spending.

Timothy Griffin

#36. For more than forty years, the United States Congress has shamelessly used payroll taxes intended for Social Security to fund big government spending.

Mike Pence

#37. Volcker relied on public opinion, integrity, and persistence to overcome the political pressure to finance government spending the easy way, by printing money rather than by taxation.

William L. Silber

#38. Ither immediately or ultimately every dollar of government spending must be raised through a dollar of taxation. Once we look at the matter. In this way, the supposed miracles of government spending will appear in another light.

Henry Hazlitt

#39. The stimulus legislation, technically known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was a mixture of tax cuts for families and businesses; increased transfer payments, like unemployment insurance; and increased direct government spending, like infrastructure investment.

Christina Romer

#40. We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy.

Grover Norquist

#41. Hillary Clinton: putting big government spending financed by the Chinese ahead of good-paying jobs for middle-class Americans. Is she guilty or not guilty?

Chris Christie

#42. What you really want to do is sit down and find a place that you can control government spending and raise more revenue.

Kevin McCarthy

#43. Government spending reduces the capital that could be invested to serve consumers and to produce new employment opportunities.

Sheldon Richman

#44. The greatest danger facing our nation isn't terrorism, global warming or the energy crisis. It is out-of-control, unbridled government spending.

R. Lee Wrights

#45. The basic idea that if you increase government spending or you cut people's taxes that stimulates the economy and lowers the unemployment rate, is a very widely accepted idea. It's in every economics textbook, that's what we teach our undergraduates, and I certainly try to teach them the truth.

Christina Romer

#46. 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

#47. When you have a country that's been accustomed to government spending at a certain level, it is really hard to ratchet it back.

Mike Lee

#48. State capitalism is about more than emergency government spending, implementation of more intelligent regulation, or a stronger social safety net. It's about state dominance of economic activity for political gain.

Ian Bremmer

#49. You've got the Democratic Party that now depends on more government spending and actual building the dependence on government in order to increase their political party.

Jim DeMint

#50. Some doomsayers think the collapse will be triggered by runaway government spending, excessive taxation, oppressive regulation, food shortages, fuel shortages or natural disasters such as deadly pandemics or lethal changes in the world's climate.

Robert Higgs

#51. If you look at the studies coming out of the Congressional Budget Office, the number one thing that's going to blow a hole in the deficit as we go forward 20, 30 years is government spending on healthcare.

Christina Romer

#52. Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the few, and long-term gain for all.

Milton Friedman

#53. If taxes and government spending are both slashed, then the salutary result will be to lower the parasitic burden of government taxes and spending upon the productive activities of the private sector.

Murray Rothbard

#54. Government spending is being restrained, the economy is making progress and moving forward, and the pro-growth, tax cutting policies put in place have allowed businesses to grow, which has brought in additional tax revenue to help pay off the debt.

Bill Shuster

#55. The truth is, the greatest tool to lift children and families from poverty is one that decreases the probability of child poverty by 82%. But it isn't a government spending program. It's called marriage.

Marco Rubio

#56. We need a proper balance between government spending on nursing homes and nursery schools - on the last six months of life and the first six months of life.

Thomas Friedman

#57. Past experience with fiscal austerity at home and overseas strongly suggests that it is best for the economy's long-run performance to restrain government spending rather than raise taxes.

Mark Zandi

#58. The Pentagon budget, like all government spending, is an expression of priorities.

Alex Pareene

#59. I believed the only thing that could turn around this government spending and mounting debt would be if the people rose up.

Jim DeMint

#60. To win in November, Republican candidates must show they are in touch with voter concerns about growth, jobs, paychecks, government spending and debt. The only way to do this is by offering specific, persuasive ideas.

Karl Rove

#61. When they call the slightest spending reductions 'painful', we will say 'If government spending prevents pain, why are we suffering so much of it?' And 'If you want to experience real pain, just stay on the track we are on.'

Mitch Daniels

#62. I don't think the press has done a very good job dealing with government spending.The Defense Department with the $9,500 toilet seat, that's not the problem anymore. Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are the problem. That's us. That's our generation. There the press never says a word.

Dave Barry

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

Larry Elder

#64. I think that when we look out with our underfunded liabilities and our national debt over $14 trillion, I think if we are part of that movement to get our government spending under control, I think that would be a tremendous legacy to leave.

Ben Quayle

#65. But public works, economic protectionism, cheap money, 'deficit-financed government spending,' and 'the animal spirits of the spendthrift' in the service of boosting 'consumption demand' ... Doesn't Keynesianism simply appeal to the worst in human nature?

Ilana Mercer

#66. It's like Tiger Woods' wife, we should take a nine iron to the back windshield of big government spending and smash it out.

Tim Pawlenty

#67. Government spending is always a "tax" burden on the American people and is never equally or fairly distributed. The poor and low-middle income workers always suffer the most from the deceitful tax of inflation and borrowing.

Ron Paul

#68. Sequestration was not designed to be anyone's ideal method for getting our hands around government spending, and it certainly isn't mine.

Johnny Isakson

#69. Unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcy - the cure is not more government spending, but helping businesses create jobs.

Brian Sandoval

#70. Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required (think stimulus) by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.

Ludwig Von Mises

#71. Government spending clearly needs some adjusting. But a budget is a statement of our priorities, and balancing our spending on the backs of our nation's seniors is not the right approach.

Paul Tonko

#72. When you start cutting government expenditure, at some point you are cutting essential services rather than excessive services. So you have to take into account the social costs involved in cutting government spending.

Raghuram Rajan

#73. Tariffs, government contracts, naval and military spending, nationalized industries, tax policy, social welfare, the legal privileging of labor unions were among the means at the disposal of the governing class to exploit the public at large for the benefits of its various clienteles.

Ralph Raico

#74. 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

#75. According to government auditors, the stimulus money is being held up because there aren't enough government workers to oversee the spending. So follow me, in other words, government workers who aren't there are needed to spend money we don't have to create jobs that don't exist.

Jay Leno

#76. The biggest problem confronting the country is our excessive spending. If we're not going to deal with it now, when are we going to deal with it? And we've watched the government explode over the last four years. We've dealt with the revenue issue.

Mitch McConnell

#77. 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

#78. While restoring a sense of fiscal discipline to Congress is a top priority, infrastructure spending is an important and necessary task of government. Our nation's long-term debt requires us to prioritize and economize with every tax dollar.

Cynthia Lummis

#79. After spending time in the East and meeting with ordinary Afghans there, it's hard to imagine how a future Afghan government will retain control of provinces such as Khost or Paktia once U.S. forces are gone.

Joby Warrick

#80. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Thomas Jefferson

#81. We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.

Ronald Reagan

#82. At some point the Japanese, Chinese and Saudi buyers of US and European Government bonds will see just what miserable value they offer. Then governments may have to stop all the runaway spending and bailouts and even put up interest rates.

Luke Johnson

#83. Democrats have always wanted to grow government with revenues from our society's producers. They aren't sincere about reducing the deficit, because they will not abandon their addiction to spending other people's money.

David Limbaugh

#84. In America ... who is to stop congress from spending too much money. They will not stop themselves, that is certain. Everybody has to think about that now. Who is to stop them.

Gertrude Stein

#85. 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

#86. Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.

Amity Shlaes

#87. I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

James Madison

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

Mitt Romney

#89. [I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.

Lawrence Lessig

#90. 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

#91. The number of realists who are betting that both the 'economy gets healthy soon' and this government gets spending under control is a tiny group, indeed.

Bob Beauprez

#92. 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

#93. Corporations care very much about maintaining the myth that government is necessarily ineffective, except when it is spending money on the military-industrial complex, building prisons, or providing infrastructural support for the business sector.

Michael Lerner

#94. I will veto any spending bill that contains funding for Planned Parenthood, facilities that perform abortion and all government family planning schemes.

Ron Paul

#95. 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

#96. The government has to spend money during a recession, because their spending is our earning.

Linda Ronstadt

#97. Everything we know about human nature and about government tells us that individuals using their own money will achieve far more good for themselves and far more for others than politicians spending money they didn't have to work to earn.

Harry Browne

#98. 'Hello my name is the Republican Party and I got a problem. I'm addicted to spending and big government.' I'd like one of them just to stand up and say that.

Glenn Beck

#99. For the first time in over a decade, your state government is doing what you do every day at home-spending what it takes in and saving for a rainy day.

Tate Reeves

#100. Sadly, far too many politicians in Washington lack the courage to do something to fix our problems. They are worried about the political implications of making the hard choices we so desperately need to cut spending and shrink government.

Matt Salmon