Quotes About Size Of Government

#1. If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.

Thomas Sowell

#2. I lowered taxes in New York. I reduced the size of government in New York. I took a $2.4 billion deficit and turned it into a $3.2 billion surplus. And I reduced taxes over 23 times or 23 times.

Rudy Giuliani

#3. One of those promises was to limit the size of government and to have the government serve the people - and not the other way around.

Scott Walker

#4. What I've said about compromise, I hope to build a conservative majority so bipartisanship becomes Democrats joining Republicans to roll back the size of government, reduce the bureaucracy, and get America moving again.

Richard Mourdock

#5. We pledge to you that we will create jobs. End economic uncertainty and make America more competitive. We will cut Washington wasteful spending and reduce the size of government. And we will reform Congress and restore your trust in government.

Kevin McCarthy

#6. While we may argue about the size of government, the Republican Party has not been a party that says, 'I want to destroy government.'

Nancy Pelosi

#7. I don't believe we need any more taxes. We need to curtail the size of government. That seems to be a common thread among a majority of Americans out there that understand that we have to limit the size and scope of our government.

Jeff Landry

#8. Someone has to stay on the line and say, no, we can do this by cutting spending and reducing the size of government. That's what I was committed to doing.

Chris Christie

#9. I'm coming to Washington, D.C., to do the people's work. And the people's work has to do with reducing spending and cutting budgets and, and trying to get a grip on the size of government.

Ken Buck

#10. Well, in the past, the size of government was one of the more fundamental dividing lines between Right and Left. The Right was supposed to represent the small government philosophy - limited spending, low taxes. Obviously, things have shifted.

Andrew Sullivan

#11. Tea Partiers hate government more than they hate the national debt. They refuse to reduce that debt with tax increases, even with tax increases on the wealthy, because a tax increase doesn't reduce the size of government.

Robert Reich

#12. We don't need bigger government. We need to shrink the size of government.

Rand Paul

#13. If you set as your goal to roll back the size of government, you have an obligation to answer the tough questions and show real courage, not just appeal to ideology. Treat the voters like adults.

Brian Baird

#14. When you have a political environment that is being so heavily influenced by the Tea Party that calls for shrinking the size of government, you can't ignore it. There are political realities.

Steve Capus

#15. Any increase in the relative size of government in the economy, therefore, shifts the societal consumption-investment ratio in favor of consumption, and prolongs the depression.

Murray N. Rothbard

#16. As president, Reagan worked very well with Democrats to do big things. It is true that he worked to reduce the size of government and cut federal taxes and he eliminated many regulations, but he also raised taxes when necessary.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#17. We talked about many issues, like welfare, is it the way of life or hand up? Talked about size of government, how much should it tax families and small businesses? And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, 'I'll be damned. we're Republicans.'

Susana Martinez

#18. Either we start cutting the government and shrinking the size of government, or else we're going to face the political wrath of the American people.

Marlin Stutzman

#19. I am perfectly happy to compromise whether it's with Democrats or anybody else, as long as we're reducing the size of government.

Ted Cruz

#20. Yes, deficits are a problem. I've been saying so for more than a quarter of a century now. But the problem is not the size of the deficit, it's the size of government's claim on our economy.

Ronald Reagan

#21. Voters did say 'repeal health care', they did say 'reduce the size of government.' But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said 'give tax breaks to the wealthiest.'

Chuck Schumer

#22. it's not the quantity of government regulations, taxes, or the size of government that distinguish Australia or Germany from the US, but whether government rules broadcast the gains from growth widely or narrowly.

George R. Tyler

#23. We want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens.

Grover Norquist

#24. It's no coincidence that trust in government is at an all-time low now that the size of government is at an all-time high.

Paul Ryan

#25. President Obama wants to increase the size of government and raise taxes, while I support less government and more individual freedom.

Ralph Hall

#26. The worst thing the federal government could do is to increase the size, reach and cost of government. If government failed in its response to the hurricane, the answer is not more inefficient government.

Cal Thomas

#27. Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.

Janice Rogers Brown

#28. The fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won't veto any of these things.

Mitch McConnell

#29. America's greatness is not found in the size of its government. America's greatness resides in the hearts and the minds of the people.

Rick Perry

#30. Before my tenure, people didn't seem to think that citizens had a right to limit the size of their government.

William Weld

#31. 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

#32. My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

Grover Norquist

#33. He was a very small man, both in stature and girth, who had been chosen as a running mate as much for his size as for his political beliefs. The pervasive thinking in government was that a taller vice president would make the President appear weak, replaceable.

Ann Patchett

#34. The central issue of our time - of all times - is the size, power and scope of government.

Grover Norquist

#35. Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you can;but never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.

Lord Chesterfield

#36. The federal government needs to be scaled back to a size where he can personally stomp it to death with steel-toed boots.

Neal Stephenson

#37. 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

#38. Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.

P. J. O'Rourke

#39. But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.

James Q. Wilson

#40. We want [government] down to the size to where it would fit in a bathtub, and then it could worry about what we were up to.

Grover Norquist

#41. Equality is of two kinds, numerical and proportional; by the first I mean sameness of equality in number or size; by the second, equality of ratios.

Aristotle.

#42. The U.S. government uses cash accounting. That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government. Every for-profit business, every not-for-profit business, every state and local government has to use real accounting except for Uncle Sam.

Jim Cooper

#43. No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

Ronald Reagan

#44. 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

#45. The media has brainwashed the electorate to expect the government to do something. The best economic policy of any government is to do nothing but reduce the size of the government, reduce the size of the laws, and reduce the size of regulations.

Marc Faber

#46. Our whole way of life today is dedicated to the removal of risk. Cradle to grave we are supported, insulated, and isolated from the risks of life - and if we fail, our government stands ready with Bandaids of every size.

Shirley Temple

#47. The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government's size is at any moment, is the bare minimum neccessary to forestall intolerable suffering.

George Will

#48. Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.

Grover Norquist

#49. 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

#50. My goal in life is to get the federal government down to half its present size and under control, and then I can write murder mysteries.

Grover Norquist

#51. First, I thought Twitter was some kind of hybrid car being developed by Government Motors. Then I thought it was a new bite-size snack combining what's best of the Frito and the Cheeto. Then I found out it was me. On a laptop. At the U.S. Open. Having fun.

Dan Jenkins

#52. We are shrinking the size of the federal government as a percent of our economy from over 21 percent of the economy to 19 percent of the economy. At the same time, we're growing the private economy.

Franklin Raines

#53. Our nation is too different, too diverse to say that what works in Massachusetts is somehow going to be grabbed by the federal government, usurping the power of states and imposing a one-size-fits-all plan on the nation. That will not work.

Mitt Romney

#54. To the size of the state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and implements, for none of these retain their facility when they are too large.

Aristotle.

#55. We have seen an outrageous increase in the size, scope, and intrusiveness of the federal government.

Jason Chaffetz

#56. Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy.

Sarah Palin

#57. Economic and social misery increases in direct proportion to the size and power of the central government of a nation or state.

Kirkpatrick Sale

#58. Most of the problems of government come from people being overwhelmed by the size and scale of what they have to do.

Tony Blair

#59. I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

Grover Norquist

#60. Chinese are already more on board than we are. China is the only country that actually discussed in formal government documents how important it is to control the size of your populations if you're going to limit emissions.

Paul R. Ehrlich

#61. No government has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size - and that, in a way, became my theme.

Ronald Reagan

#62. 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

#63. Concerns about the size and role of government are what seem to leave reformers stammering and speechless in town-hall meetings. The right wants to have a debate over fundamental principles; elected Democrats seem incapable of giving it to them.

Thomas Frank

#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. The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.

Henry Hazlitt