Fiscal Quotes & Sayings

In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They'll just ask, "So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?" — Bill McKibben

In the distance, I see a frightful storm brewing in the form of un-tethered government debt. I choose the words -frightful storm' - deliberately to avoid hyperbole. Unless we take steps to deal with it, the long-term fiscal situation of the federal government will be unimaginably more devastating to our economic prosperity than the subprime debacle and the recent debauching of credit markets that we are working right now so hard to correct. — Richard W. Fisher

I can't remember the exact quote but when I used to trade and Mr. Volcker was Fed chairman, he said something like 'gold is my enemy, I'm always watching what gold is doing', we need to think why he made a statement like that. If you're a central banker or one of the congressmen or senators, watch what gold is doing because this is a no-confidence vote in fiscal and dollar policy. — Rick Santelli

Let's push the Pentagon off the fiscal cliff. — Cindy Sheehan

I'm a woman; in so many ways I've been programmed to please. I took the job and spent time hunkered over figures, budgets, charts, and fiscal-year projections. I tried, but I hated it.
"Working at a job you don't like is the same as going to prison every day," my father used to say. He was right. I felt imprisoned by an impressive title, travel, perks, and a good salary. On the inside, I was miserable and lonely, and I felt as if I was losing myself. I spent weekends working on reports no one read, and I gave presentations that I didn't care about. It made me feel like a sellout and, worse, a fraud.
Now set free, like any inmate I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. — Kathleen Flinn

A Bank is but a college of Fiscal Magic. — Catherynne M Valente

Massive progress has been made in the last five years. More progress has to be made in terms of fiscal union and banking union. — Christine Lagarde

We need balanced programs, balanced priorities on the fiscal side — Jason Furman

As the President reviewed the state of the union and unveiled his second-term agenda, he fell short of adequately explaining how he intends to set America back on the course of fiscal responsibility and secure the fiscal health of the nation. — Ron Kind

Spending and tax cut decisions must be both fiscally responsible and fair to our working families. I believe that fiscal responsibility is the way to create prosperity for America and secure the retirement of America's seniors. — Blanche Lincoln

The large and rising offshore wealth translates to substantial losses in fiscal revenue. By my estimate, the fraud perpetuated through unreported foreign accounts each year costs about $200 billion to governments throughout the world (see fig. — Gabriel Zucman

There is a Party of fiscal responsibility ... economic responsibility ... social responsibility ... civic responsibility ... personal responsibility ... and moral responsibility. That party is the Democratic Party. — Howard Dean

The ones with the most generous social provisions are the northern European countries: Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. These are export-oriented, surplus economies with sound fiscal balances and strong social safety nets. The claim that Europe's fiscal mess is the result of overly generous social welfare systems simply cannot be substantiated. — Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh

I'm a committed Republican. I believe very strongly in individual liberty. I tend not to think much in terms of group politics. I really am a kind of small government person and I'm most certainly a fiscal conservative and strong on national defense. — Condoleezza Rice

While President Obama shirks his responsibility to advance solutions to our fiscal challenges, he can no longer hide from the merciless math of the balance sheet. Conservatives have made certain of that. — Paul Ryan

The caricature of what George Osborne is doing on the fiscal side is absurd. If you read some of the commentary, particularly from the left, you would think he was turning the clock back to the 1930s. — Nick Clegg

Fiscal crises often turn into financial crises, dealing a blow to the real economy. — Lee Myung-bak

I am personally convinced - and I think the Greek people share this belief in a fundamental way - that we can achieve fiscal consolidation more effectively and we can restore competitiveness in a more fundamental and permanent way within the euro area than outside. — Lucas Papademos

Arizona is in the midst of a fiscal crisis. We've cut school funding. And they pass a bill questioning Obama's citizenship? For real? — Kyrsten Sinema

I'm a fiscal hawk. I vote against all taxes, but I do believe the environment, and climate change, is a bigger issue than fiscal deficits are as a risk to the nation. — Vinod Khosla

Fiscal policy, monetary policy, they need to work together to try and raise the level of growth. — Joe Hockey

For me what we need is a great deal of fiscal stimulus to show the UK is open for business. We need to upskill our workforce. I'm very much in tune with the work our chancellor is doing. — Andrea Leadsom

The way forward is for governments to consciously pursue monetary and fiscal stability through setting clear objectives, establishing proper rules, and requiring openness and transparency - the new rules of the game. — Gordon Brown

The President is not squaring with the American people as to the seriousness of our nation's fiscal condition. It is time for people to stand up and tell the truth. — Kent Conrad

With a chip on his shoulder larger than his margin of victory, Barack Obama is approaching his second term by replicating the mistake of his first. Then his overreaching involved health care - expanding the entitlement state at the expense of economic growth. Now he seeks another surge of statism, enlarging the portion of gross domestic product grasped by government and dispensed by politics. The occasion is the misnamed 'fiscal cliff,' the proper name for which is: the Democratic Party's agenda. — George Will

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schaeuble, her finance minister, are right to oppose fiscal and bank unions without political union. — Edmund Phelps

The U.S. fiscal union has worked, in no small part, by enabling subsidies to the Mississippis without requiring the approval of the Minnesotas. It creates an important form of insurance. — Austan Goolsbee

You know, we have a fiscal train wreck before us. And unless we act, and act deliberately, we're not going to enable our kids to have what we have. It's plain and simple as that. — Eric Cantor

I see around 100 shows a month, going from Niketown-size palaces where you feel like yelling, to storefronts in Bushwick. Each has to pay the bills; keep artists happy; and cope with collectors (oy!), curators (ay-yi-yi), critics (woo-hoo!), and occasionally plumbers. That their fiscal life often hangs in the balance only adds to the energy. — Jerry Saltz

It's the usual Socialist fiscal math of 1 + 1 = You're paying, so who cares. — Rachel Marsden

This Budget reflects a choice - not an easy choice, but the right choice. And when you think about it, the only choice. The choice to take the responsible, prudent path to fiscal stability, economic growth and opportunity. — George Pataki

I stand for limited government, fiscal responsibility, personal freedom, personal responsibility, so the Republican Party will support me. — Rick Scott

A drastic reduction in the deficit ... will take place in the fiscal year '82. — Ronald Reagan

President Obama has ignored or dismissed proposals that would address our anti-competitive tax code and unsustainable trajectory of federal debt - including his own bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform - and submitted no plan for entitlement reform. — Glenn Hubbard

Restoring responsibility and accountability is essential to the economic and fiscal health of our nation. — Carl Levin

Tomorrow's outcome for our nation is dependent upon how we act today to create the outcomes we desire for our country. Individual accountability is each of our responsibilities if we want to rebuild, renew and restore the great values that made America a global super power and light of hope to the rest of the world. Each of us is either part of the problem or the solution. — Don A. Holbrook

Even in a time of fiscal austerity, education is more than just an expense. — Arne Duncan

A new report shows that medicare and Medicaid made more than $50 Billion in bad payments during fiscal year 2011. Under Obamacare, that'll become known as 'Tuesday.' — Fred Thompson

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

In order to consolidate the euro we need to harmonise our economic, fiscal and social policies, hence we are going toward greater integration. — Francois Fillon

Aging bodies are fiscal black holes into which you can pour endless amounts of money. — Richard Lamm

The United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century. — Laurence Kotlikoff

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

There is an old saying, "How did you go bankrupt?" And the answer is, "Gradually, and then suddenly." The impending fiscal crisis in the United States will make its appearance in the same way. — Seth Klarman

trouble. After all, you have just picked up a book on the fiscal crisis by a certified — David M. Walker

A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly. — Max Hastings

Certainly the Republican Party changed and I never changed, as I became an independent my values never changed whether it's on fiscal responsibility, environment or using government tools to help the less fortunate. — Lincoln Chafee

When the Republican Party is no longer the party of fiscal conservatism then clearly I would argue that we've lost our way. — Bobby Jindal

I'm not trying to be diplomatic. I'm trying to be more nuanced and realistic. I think there has to be a serious examination of the shortcomings of the Euro structure. Euro central institutions, whether it be fiscal policy, monetary policy, financial regulation, are simply not as robust as they are in a currency that has a national government behind it. — Stephen Harper

The budgets we work on in Congress are more than just fiscal documents; they are a reflection of our moral values as well. In choosing where to spend money, members of Congress choose what priorities they value. — Tim Walz

As we move forward to debate our economic and fiscal challenges in the weeks and months ahead, one thing is clear: Our economic agenda, choices and decisions, will be viewed through the perspective and the eyes of our nation's women and their needs and those of their families. — Nancy Pelosi

The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary. — Ben Bernanke

Now, the president would like to do tax reform, which would obviously lower rates for most people in America and make the tax code fair and get rid of loopholes and special treatment. But absent tax reform, the president believes the right way to get our fiscal house in order is ask the wealthy to pay their fair share. — David Plouffe

With age, life becomes complex and difficult, often fraught with risk on several levels, from the practical to the fiscal. — Henry Rollins

Tim Kaine has a message of fiscal responsibility and generosity of spirit. That kind of message can sell anywhere. — Barack Obama

We also need to encourage Americans to become more fiscally responsible themselves. We can do this by redesigning our tax system into an expenditure tax with a single flat rate ... We have to substantially reduce the size and scope of the federal government, fundamentally increase the role of the states in choosing their own practices, and bring decision-making closer to the people, not to unelected administrators. These steps are crucial to getting our nation on a path of fiscal, political and constitutional responsibility. — Edwin Feulner

This program that the Republican majority has taken us toward as a country is leading us to fiscal bankruptcy. — Chaka Fattah

Political leaders in Illinois kicked the can down the road, raised taxes, and ignored fiscal realities. Now, they're realizing the consequences of their actions: credit downgrades and negative outlooks. — Scott Walker

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the canidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy
to be followed by a dictatorship. — Alexander Fraser Tytler

Corruption is an inevitable by-product of the present structure of Nigeria's federalism. Once we restructure the polity into a true fiscal federalism, everything else will simply fall into place. Until then, corruption remains as official as it is legal in Nigeria. — Tony Osborg

A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal. — Zadie Smith

I know there's a great deal that Arnold Schwarzenegger could teach me about making movies. There's a great deal I could teach him about the fiscal reforms that are needed - desperately needed - to set California back in good order. — Tom McClintock

Since the debt limit simply accommodates debt that has already been incurred, raising it should, in theory, be perfunctory. But politicians have found it a useful shibboleth for showing their fealty fiscal discipline, even as they vote to ratify the debts their previous actions have a beginning the country to pay. The symbol of railing against debt has proven politically beneficial, even if not substantively meaningful. — Thomas E. Mann

You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again. — Matt Taibbi

In the light of the actual fighting that is now in progress, we have reached the point where the military considerations clearly outweigh the fiscal considerations. — Louis A. Johnson

We are out-of-the-gates strong in fiscal 2015. We grew revenue 8% in the first quarter and exceeded our QuickBooks Online subscriber and our company financial targets. — Brad D. Smith

The moment a large investor doesn't believe a government will pay back its debt when it says it will, a crisis of confidence could develop. Investors have scant patience for the years of good governance - politically fraught fiscal restructuring, austerity and debt rescheduling - it takes to defuse a sovereign-debt crisis. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

I'm not really conservative. I'm conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don't any more. — Clint Eastwood

After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don't walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It's easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What's hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that's what we must do. Like families across the country, we have to take responsibility for every dollar we spend. — Barack Obama

The potential gains from improved stabilization policies are on the order of hundredths of a percent of consumption, perhaps two orders of magnitude smaller than the potential benefits of available supply-side fiscal reforms. — Robert Lucas Jr.

With all that IMF money, the Thailand's and Mexico's are spared the consequences of their fiscal incompetence, and Wall Street's heavy hitters are spared the consequences of their stupid investments. The global economy is a rigged game, rigged so Third World politicians, rich investors and global corporations win - and U.S. taxpayers lose. — Pat Buchanan

Our investments in social justice and basic needs are as vital to our future as fiscal and macroeconomic reforms. A nation deeply divided will not stand. And it certainly will not move forward. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism . — Ludwig Von Mises

Donors, like voters, increasingly expect candidates to exercise fiscal discipline. — Mark McKinnon

Which brings me to the point: In order to lose momentum, the U.S. economy has to have momentum to begin with. If it had any, I missed it. What we had was a government-prescribed course of amphetamines (to keep it up), antibiotics (to prevent infection) and antidepressants (to make it feel better). It endured regular steroid injections from both monetary and fiscal authorities. And it still has no real muscle. — Caroline Baum

What I would like to vote for is a candidate that is socially liberal, a fiscal conservative, broadly libertarian with a small 'l' but sensible and pragmatic and with a chance of winning. That's more or less the empty set. — Tyler Cowen

You know, when companies who have made a commitment and have legacy costs and all of a sudden want to walk away from that commitment and lay it on the federal government, that's a problem. It's a fiscal problem for us. — Dennis Hastert

Following Greece's defeat at the hands of Turkey in 1897, Greece's fiscal house was entrusted to a Control Commission. During the 20th century, the drachma was one of the world's worst currencies. It recorded the world's sixth highest hyperinflation. In October 1944, Greece's monthly inflation rate hit 13,800%. — Steve Hanke

If we have a common currency, the main regulator for policy in the country is the fiscal policy. — Iveta Radicova

Our first benchmark is to cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain's credit rating. I know that we are taking a political gamble to set this up as a measure of success. Protecting the credit rating will not be easy The pace of fiscal consolidation will be co-ordinated with monetary policy. And we will protect Britain's credit rating and international reputation. — George Osborne

That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies and cut their subsidies. On the micro level we will allow other economic agents, both domestic and foreign, to compete with them. — Vaclav Klaus

The United States forgot - if it ever knew - the supreme virtue of an enlightened realpolitik, which is to keep one's powder dry, intervene militarily as a last resort (rather than a first), and maintain industrial and fiscal strength at home. — Mike Lofgren

And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. — Thomas Jefferson

The failure of the White House and Congress to seriously address the nation's fiscal situation is certain to broaden the belief among many voters that the U.S. political system is broken. — Ron Fournier

Sadly, the President's budget proposal for the upcoming year once again puts cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans over addressing our country's severe fiscal problems. — Carl Levin

Everyone must be in the same competitive situation, including on the fiscal level. — Francois Hollande

We have to remember we're in a global economy. The purpose of fiscal stimulus is not simply to sustain activity in our national economies, but to help the global economy as well, and that's why it's so critical that measures in those packages avoid anything that smacks of protectionism. — Stephen Harper

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

Popular as Keynesian fiscal policy may be, many economists are skeptical that it works. They argue that fine-tuning the economy is a virtually impossible task, and that fiscal-stimulus programs are usually too small, and arrive too late, to make a difference. — James Surowiecki

[T]he next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we're bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we're good. And real-world policy - policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families - is being built on that foundation. — Paul Krugman

It's time for the sensible center to rise up and push for a rational approach to our fiscal challenges. — Steven Rattner

When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money. — Alice Adams

When Texans suffered from the collapse of the oil market in the 1980s, they could rely on the fiscal union to help them. When Texas boomed with rising oil prices in the 2000s, it contributed to the union to help harder hit regions. — Austan Goolsbee

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

Too many members of Congress are too involved in grabbing what they can for their states or districts without enough emphasis on overall fiscal restraint for the sake of the nation as a whole. We need a new era of fiscal sanity. I am not willing to subject my children and grandchildren to the level of debt that Congress has created. — John Ensign

We need to resist the temptation to create more entitlements and more entitlements, which is one of the reasons we are heading recklessly toward fiscal crisis. — Jeff Sessions

What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our Commander-in-Chief, what we heard today was a political broadside from our Campaigner-in-Chief. — Paul Ryan

Most economists would concede that, in theory, government has the tools to smooth the business cycle. The problem is that fiscal policy is not made in theory; it's made in Congress. — Charles Wheelan

I think that retiring the baby boomers is going to be one of the great challenges in America, that you cannot make fiscal sense out of the future of our children without taking on entitlements. — Richard Lamm

The idea seems to be to use the next treaty talks to strike a grand bargain: Britain will be helpful to those states wishing to establish a fiscal union among themselves if, in exchange, we can amicably derogate from the aspects of the EU which we dislike. — Daniel Hannan