Quotes About Government Waste

#1. I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.

Milton Friedman

#2. New Rule: If we want to find a place to cut government waste, we must start with the DEA rubber duck. Yes, on the DEA's website you can buy a rubber ducky with a DEA badge and a cop's hat. Which I recommend doing, because they're a great place to hide your weed.

Bill Maher

#3. 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

#4. The biggest government waste: The death penalty. An individual death-penalty case could climb to $100 million, much of it spent at the litigation level. Also, DNA evidence has exonerated nearly 300 death-row inmates.

John McLaughlin

#5. To pay out millions upon millions of dollars in bonuses for incomplete work, poor performance, and unacceptable products is the height of government waste and mismanagement.

Jim Gibbons

#6. Who wants good people in government? Good people should be in the private sector. Helping us out, helping themselves out in the private sector. We want schmoes in government. We want people who can't find the doorknob. Why waste productive people, as well as looting the taxpayer?

Murray Rothbard

#7. The idea that government can instruct private enterprise on how to eliminate waste is preposterous.

James Cook

#8. If you have faith in the public sector, as I do, you must be the harshest critic of corruption, waste and fraud in government.

Eric Schneiderman

#9. If you refuse to acknowledge that there is any waste that can be culled from the military budget, you are a big-government conservative, and you cannot lay claim to balancing the budget.

Rand Paul

#10. Like all good citizens, the elderly and people with disabilities want to eradicate waste and fraud from government, but helping people with special needs meet their basic needs doesn't fit this description.

Joni Eareckson Tada

#11. 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

#12. Housing is a human right. There can be no fairness or justice in a society in which some live in homelessness, or in the shadow of that risk, while others cannot even imagine it.

Jordan Flaherty

#13. Most Americans recognize that whatever the government program is, no matter how essential it is, it's waste.

George Allen

#14. I am fighting vigorously for less spending, less waste and limited government. I strongly believe that the more government grows, the less freedom Americans have.

Ed Royce

#15. It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.

P. J. O'Rourke

#16. If you're looking for ways to cut waste in government, you can start with John Prescott.

George Osborne

#17. Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return.

Doug Casey

#18. 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

#19. All the things I resent most about out-of-control government and the politicians who support it, grow it, or simply fail to deal with it, what angers me above all else is the knowledge that all of this waste and ruin is entirely preventable.

Carly Fiorina

#20. In China, I helped introduce UNEP's campaign to reduce food waste on World Environment Day. The government took notice of food waste issues and now, when you over-order in a restaurant, you are encouraged to downsize. This is where people can really impact policy and vice versa!

Li Bingbing

#21. I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H.L. Mencken

#22. When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.

Henry Hazlitt

#23. The Australian Government's decision to take on the dominant funding role for the entire public hospital system is designed to: end the blame game; eliminate waste; and to shoulder the funding burden of the rapidly rising health costs of the future.

Kevin Rudd

#24. Anyone who objects to any government whatsoever as a form of socialism ought not to pull that socialist lever in their home, the one that makes their waste disappear in a whirlpool into the socialized sewage treatment plant.

John Medaille

#25. Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen.

Grover Cleveland

#26. I don't mind the government accruing debts as long as every dollar is spent effectively with a high return. That works out fine. If you accumulate debts and waste your money, that's, of course, a disaster.

Jeremy Grantham

#27. Of course, ISIS is a terrible organization that has to be defeated. And, of course, we need a strong military. But just as with every other agency of government, you know what, the military also has got to get rid of waste and fraud and cost overruns.

Hillary Clinton

#28. In Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the government in a matter of years has put a lot of energy behind recycling food waste as livestock feed. It's environmentally friendly, it provides cheap livestock feed for the farmers in those parts of the world, and it avoids sending the food waste to landfill.

Tristram Stuart

#29. Instead of raising taxes as some would insist, we need to reduce waste and inefficiency in government.

Tim Murphy

#30. It must be a conviction Government. As Prime Minister I could not waste time having internal arguments.

Margaret Thatcher

#31. The vast amount of waste and sheer stupidity in government - from the Pentagon to the Food and Drug Administration - could fill committee agendas for years.

Tom Coburn

#32. I understand that government should live within its means, value the money it holds in trust from you the taxpayer, avoid waste and, above all else, observe the first maxim of good government: namely, do no avoidable harm.

Tony Abbott

#33. The growing role that the government has played in financing and administering schooling has led not only the enormous waste of taxpayers money but also to a far poorer educational system.

Milton Friedman

#34. Any large extension of the Government into business affairs - no matter what the pretense and no matter how the the extension is labeled - will be bound to promote waste and put a curb on our prosperity and progress.

Thomas A. Edison

#35. It is time to cut out the mountains of waste and inefficiency and duplication in the federal government.

Mitt Romney

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

Timothy Griffin

#37. We have been getting ready to recycle more e-waste by investing in infrastructure, providing grants to local government and working with industry.

Jay Weatherill

#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. Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve.

Bob Riley

#40. Private loans will utilize existing resources and capital far better than government loans. Government loans will waste far more capital and resources than private loans. Government loans, in short, as compared with private loans, will reduce production, not increase it.

Henry Hazlitt

#41. 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

#42. 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