Federal Spending Quotes & Sayings

A federal bailout would spare California from having to make spending cuts needed to bring its budget into balance. The matter has become urgent since California voters rejected several tax-hiking ballot initiatives. Rather than taking the vote as a signal to dramatically curtail spending, the state turned to the feds. If they get a free pass, the politicians can avoid fixing any of their past mistakes or preparing California for the future. — Peter Schiff

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

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

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

Californians are worried about whether they will have a job along with ballooning federal spending and deficits. — Carly Fiorina

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

Expose widespread waste and duplication in federal spending. — Tom Coburn

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

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

In a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less. That is enough. The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government. — Paul Ryan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help." — Thomas Sowell

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

We also must pull from our highest ideals of justice and protect against those ills that destabilized our economy - like predatory lending, over-leveraged financial institutions and the unchecked avarice of the past that trumped fairness and common sense. Our platform calls for significant cuts in federal spending. — Cory Booker

I sense that conservatives have largely already tuned out to the coming elections, after six years of burgeoning federal spending and inaction on key issues, such as immigration. The Republican Party has become the party of the government status quo, and conservatives see no reason to reward it with their votes. — Bob Barr

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

Ever since 1945 the federal government has held and indeed increased its importance as the first customer of the American economy. Government spending had been the primary economic stimulant and to increase it had been the goal of hundreds of interest groups; hopes of balanced budgets and cheap, business-like administration always ran aground upon this fact. What was more, the United States was a democracy; whatever the doctrinaire objections to it, and however much rhetoric might be devoted to attacking it, a welfare state slowly advanced because voters wanted it that way. These facts gradually made the old ideal of totally free enterprise, unchecked and uninvaded by the influence of government, unreal. — J.M. Roberts

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.

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

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

Politics is a damn expensive business. I had one hell of a time trying to raise money as a candidate. I had to put a second mortgage on our house to get that campaign started, and I ended up spending over $300,000 to get elected. I believe that public financing of federal election campaigns is the only thing that will insure good candidates and save the two-party system. It is the most degrading thing in the world to go out with your hat in your hand and beg for money, but that's what you have to do if you haven't got your own resources. — Joe Biden

Finally, we spend lots of money. Spending on jails and prisons by state and federal governments has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to nearly $80 billion today. Private prison builders and prison service companies have spent millions of dollars to persuade state and local governments to create new crimes, impose harsher sentences, and keep more people locked up so that they can earn more profits. Private profit has corrupted incentives to improve public safety, reduce the costs of mass incarceration, and most significantly, promote rehabilitation of the incarcerated. — Bryan Stevenson

During the twentieth century, however, the size, scope, and power of government exploded. Total government spending increased from 6.73 percent of GDP in 1906 to 37.79 percent of GDP in 2014.[2] The dollar has lost more than 95 percent of its value due to the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. Top marginal income tax rates have been as high as 94 percent. Entitlement programs now constitute more than 60 percent of the federal budget. And businesses are hog-tied by more than 175,000 pages of red tape in the Code of Federal Regulations. What — Michael Dahlen

We prosecuted two of the biggest terrorism cases in the world and stopped Fort Dix from being attacked by six American radicalized Muslims from a Mosque in New Jersey because we worked with the Muslim American community to get intelligence and we used the Patriot Act to get other intelligence to make sure we did those cases. This is the difference between actually been a federal prosecutor, actually doing something, and not just spending your life as one of hundred debating it. — Chris Christie

I was 32 years old, and I've changed my mind. And the biggest reason that I changed my mind was my seven years as a federal prosecutor. What I learned in those seven years was that we were spending too much time talking about gun laws against law- abiding citizens and not nearly enough time talking about enforcing the gun laws strongly against criminals. — Chris Christie

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

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

It seems that nearly every American either has a share of federal spending or has a close relative who does. — Trent Lott

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

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

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

Only dramatic cuts in the federal deficit, a rollback of regulations that cripple small and community banks, a cancellation of future tax increase plans, a big reduction in federal spending, repeal of Obamacare, freeing manufacturing from the prospect of carbon taxation and unleashing out domestic energy potential can solve our problems. But Obama is not about to undo his legacy of disaster for the American people. — Dick Morris

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

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

Ronald Reagan cut taxes to raise the deficit to stop liberals in future years from increasing spending. Obama will raise spending to raise the deficit to stop conservatives in future years from cutting taxes. As he funds every liberal dream - from alternative energy production to infrastructure renovation to more federal revenue sharing - he will force a massive expansion in the size of government for a decade to come. — Dick Morris

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

What would you think of a person who earned $24,000 a year but spent $35,000? Suppose on top of that, he was already $170,000 in debt. You'd tell him to get his act together - stop spending so much or he'd destroy his family, impoverish his kids and wreck their future. Of course, no individual could live so irresponsibly for long. But tack on eight more zeroes to that budget and you have the checkbook for our out-of-control, big-spending federal government. — John Stossel

Everybody complains about pork, but members of Congress keep spending because voters do not throw them out of office for doing so. The rotten system in Congress will change only when the American people change their beliefs about the proper role of government in our society. Too many members of Congress believe they can solve all economic problems, cure all social ills, and bring about worldwide peace and prosperity simply by creating new federal programs. We must reject unlimited government and reassert the constitutional rule of law if we hope to halt the spending orgy. — Ron Paul

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

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

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

Currently we're suffering from the fear instilled into Americans that another 9/11 is just around the corner. We've also been brainwashed into believing the Federal Reserve just saved us from a total financial collapse in the past seven years even though the Fed was one of the most important causes of the crisis. To deal with the threats of another attack and another financial crisis we are expected to complacently accept endless spending, endless debt, endless bailouts, endless inflation by the Federal Reserve, endless spending by the Congress, and even endless war. — Ron Paul

For small businesses, you need less taxes, less federal spending, and you need less regulation that blocks their growth. — David Malpass

To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power. To distrust government is simply to trust humanity - to trust in the ability of average people to peacefully, productively coexist without some official policing their every move. The State is merely another human institution - less creative than Microsoft, less reliable than Federal Express, less responsible than the average farmer husbanding his land, and less prudent than the average citizen spending his own paycheck. — James Bovard

Roll back federal spending to 2008 levels. — Rand Paul

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

Today government touches everything in America and harms almost everything it touches. Federal, state, and local governments together spend 42 out of every 100 dollars we earn. Those who do the taxing and spending have long since ceased to work for the people as a whole. Rather, they work for themselves and for their clients-the education industry, the welfare culture, public-employee unions, etc.. — Malcolm Wallop

With the discovery of vast new North American energy resources - thanks to the application of proven technologies like hydraulic fracturing and commonsense regulatory processes on non-federal lands - the U.S. government should no longer be in the business of spending taxpayer dollars on risky, exotic energy projects. — Fred Upton

When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it. — Howard Warren Buffett

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

When you talk about raising that debt limit, the only way that I would ever support raising the debt limit if we also talk about budgetary controls on the federal government, capping its spending, how do we deal with the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid problems, because they cannot continue to run on auto-pilot. — Allen West

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

Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.73 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.74 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.75 — Michelle Alexander

My approach to cutting spending as president, is to do a ten percent across the board cut of all federal agencies, and then ask each of my new agency heads to find another ten percent by drilling down. That's what you do in business to come up with approximately 20 percent cuts for the first fiscal year budget. — Herman Cain

The recession, which started in 2007, is ongoing. The
underlying fundamental causes of the meltdown have not been
addressed. Banks are still not lending. Companies are still not hiring.
Congress has still not seriously addressed the growing debt. Neither
has Congress checked its own out-of-control spending. The much
lauded reforms installed by Frank-Dodd are nothing more than another
expansion of federal government control over the engines of wealth
creation. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Federal spending is atrocious. — Jason Chaffetz

The greatest threat facing America today
is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government,
marked by shameless deficit spending and
Federal Reserve currency devaluation.
It is this one-two punch -
Congress spending more than it can tax or borrow,
and the Fed printing money to make up the difference -
that threatens to impoverish us by further
destroying the value of our dollars. — Ron Paul

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

Let's look at the amounts involved.5 When George W. Bush left office, the federal debt was $9 trillion. That's a huge amount, and Bush added nearly $4 trillion to the total, a disgraceful legacy caused primarily by profligate domestic spending and foreign wars. Bush's second term deficits averaged around $500 billion. But still, the $9 trillion represented America's entire debt accumulated from the founding through 2008. Now, under Obama, the federal debt is $18.5 trillion. It's larger than America's gross domestic product which is around $17 trillion. The debt will be over $19 trillion when Obama leaves office. While progressives professed to be scandalized by Bush's $500 billion deficits, they have remained silent while Obama racks up trillion-dollar deficits. — Dinesh D'Souza

Cut defense spending as part of cutting all federal spending. — Rand Paul

Government is taking 40 percent of the GDP. And that's at the state, local and federal level. President Obama has taken government spending at the federal level from 20 percent to 25 percent. Look, at some point, you cease being a free economy, and you become a government economy. And we've got to stop that. — Mitt Romney

American taxpayers will be forced to foot the bill for the overwhelming costs of amnesty. Under current law, once 11 million illegal immigrants receive probationary status, they will immediately have access to federal benefits like Social Security and Obamacare coverage. If we thought we had a problem with government spending before, just wait. — Lamar S. Smith

Conservatives in general, and even so called Tea Party conservatives, are not against transportation spending. Indeed, interstate commerce is one purpose of interstate highways and byways, and is one of the things the federal government is actually supposed to spend our tax dollars on. What conservatives are opposed to is needless and excessive spending, pork-barrel spending, deficit spending, spending to pick winners and losers among American individuals and corporations, and spending to promote the social and economic whims of the Washington few. — Barry Loudermilk

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

Redirect federal spending aimed at fulfilling the terms of the increasingly irrelevant Kyoto Protocol. — Stephen Harper

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

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

OK, so $1 trillion is what it costs to run the federal government for one year. So this money's going to run through September of 2016. Half of the trillion dollars goes to defense spending and the Pentagon. The other half goes to domestic spending - everything from prisons to parks. So there's also about 74 billion in there that goes to the military operations that we have ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria. — Susan Davis

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

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

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

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

As quickly as you start spending federal money in large amounts, it looks like free money. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

If the US Government was a family - they would be making $58,000 a year, spending $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand. — Dave Ramsey