Government Deficit Quotes & Sayings

[T]he only way to shrink the trade deficit is for the government to prohibit us from buying whatever we want. — John Stossel

If the interest rate the country pays on its debt is higher than the growth of nominal GDP (that's real GDP plus inflation) that debt ratio automatically goes up - unless the government runs a surplus in the budget excluding interest. Conversely, when the interest rate a country pays on its debt is below its growth rate, the ratio automatically drops, unless there's a deficit in the budget, excluding interest. The latter scenario - having interest rates below the growth rate - is like having the wind at your back. And that's the situation Spain, Ireland and Portugal should all be in this year. Italy is close. — Anonymous

Economically, long-term joblessness means fewer dollars for consumption. For deficit control, it means fewer taxpayers contributing to government revenues and tens of billions more spent on unemployment insurance. — Nina Easton

In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington. Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so. John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. — Zell Miller

Interest groups exercise influence way out of proportion to their place in society, distort both taxes and spending, and raise overall deficit levels through their ability to manipulate the budget in their favor. They also undermine the quality of public administration as a result of the multiple and often contradictory mandates they induce Congress to support. All of this has led to a crisis of representation, in which ordinary people feel their supposedly democratic government no longer truly reflects their interests but is under the control of a variety of shadowy elites. What is ironic and peculiar is that this crisis in representativeness has occurred in part because of reforms designed to make the system more democratic. — Francis Fukuyama

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

At times of recession, running a budget deficit is highly desirable. Once the economy begins to recover, you have to balance the budget. But it will also need additional revenues. Should the government not receive them, we will all get punished with higher interest rates. — George Soros

When the U.K. or U.S. government issues bonds to fund a deficit, the buyers are not solely in the U.K. or the U.S. - they're in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Investment banks provide direct access to these buyers. — Bob Diamond

In almost every enterprise, government has provided business with opportunities for private gain at public expense. Government nurtures private capital accumulation through a process of subsidies, supports, and deficit spending and an increasingly inequitable tax system. — Michael Parenti

however much such loans may temporarily relieve the situation, the Government is still indebted for the amount of the surplus thus accrued, which it must ultimately pay, while its ability to pay is not strengthened, but weakened by a continued deficit. — George Washington

To reverse the trend and reduce the role of government in our lives, and thus alleviate the government deficit and inflation pressures, is a giant educational task. The social and economic ideas that gave birth to the transfer system must be discredited and replaced with old values of individual independence and self-reliance. The social philosophy of individual freedom and unhampered private property must again be our guiding light. — Hans F. Sennholz

With attention deficit democracy, I am trying to wake up people to how the combination of mass ignorance, fear mongering by the government, and lying politicians is putting our entire system of government to a death spiral. — James Bovard

The only thing growing faster than the federal government's deficit is Chris Matthews' man-crush on Barack Obama. — Tim Pawlenty

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

As we peer into society's future, we
you and I, and our government
must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

The president has been a true friend of the ag industry, because he continues to invest large amounts of money at a time when savings is really the goal of the federal government to deal with the deficit. — Mike Johanns

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

It is my view that what is important is cutting government spending, however spending is financed. A so-called deficit is a disguised and hidden form of taxation. The real burden on the public is what government spends (and mandates others to spend). As I have said repeatedly, I would rather have government spend one trillion dollars with a deficit of a half a trillion than have government spend two trillion dollars with no deficit. — Milton Friedman

My point here is to insist that the rich should pay their way, and that they can easily afford to do so. All of the angst of canceling vital government programs to close the deficit is a charade put on by the rich for the rich. With a fair tax structure and a just contribution of the rich to the rest of society, we can afford a truly civilized America. Let — Jeffrey D. Sachs

Trying to cut the deficit too far, too fast isn't working. The government must adopt a steadier, more balanced plan to get our deficit down and take immediate action now to support the economy and create jobs here in Britain. — Ed Balls

Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don't pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap. — Ben Stein

During the fiscal year ending in 1861, expenses of the federal government had been $67 million. After the first year of armed conflict they were $475 million and, by 1865, had risen to one billion, three-hundred million dollars. On the income side of the ledger, taxes covered only about eleven per cent of that figure. By the end of the war, the deficit had risen to $2.61 billion. That money had to come from somewhere. — G. Edward Griffin

If the U.S. Government was a company, the deficit would be $5 trillion because they would have to account by general accepted accounting principles. But actually they encourage government spending, reckless government spending, because the government can issue Treasury bills at extremely low interest rates. — Marc Faber

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

The folks celebrating Jim Bunning are seeing him as an anti-government, anti-spending activist. But to embrace Jim Bunning is to embrace a strange record, if you really are a libertarian, if you really are a deficit hawk, if you really care about spending and responsibility. — Rachel Maddow

If the US government spends 40 percent of the nation's income, as it does through either borrowing or taxes, that income is not available for people to spend. The deficit is an indirect method of taxation. Of course, politicians prefer to borrow instead of tax because then someone down the road has to deal with the consequences. — Milton Friedman

Unlike the federal government, most states don't have the option of running a deficit. — Marcia Angell

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

Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt; the United States continues to spend more on its military than do all other nations on earth put together, and military expenditures are not only the basis of the government's industrial policy; they also take up such a huge proportion of the budget that by many estimations, were it not for them, the United States would not run a deficit at all. — David Graeber

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

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

If you wanted to create jobs in a way that has minimal effect on the deficit but has government action, the two best things you could do are the infrastructure bank and a simple SBA-like loan guarantee for all building retrofits, where the contractor or the energy-service company guarantees the savings. So that allows the bank to loan money to let a school or a college or a hospital or a museum or a commercial building unencumbered by debt to loan it on terms that are longer, so you can pay it back only from your utility savings. You could create a million jobs doing that. — William J. Clinton

Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with. — Milton Friedman

What's hurting the U.S. economy is total government spending. The deficit is an indicator that the government is spending so much money that it can't even get around to stealing all of the money that it wants to spend. But the tip of the iceberg is not what hit the Titanic - it was the 90 percent of the iceberg under water. — Grover Norquist

The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect. — Sam Ewing

If you took every single penny that Warren Buffett has, it'd pay for 4-1/2 days of the US government. This tax-the-rich won't work. The problem here is the government is way bigger than even the capacity of the rich to sustain it. The Buffett Rule would raise $3.2 billion a year, and take 514 years just to pay off Obama's 2011 budget deficit. — Mark Steyn

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

For the last 4 years, our Federal Government has produced the four biggest deficits in history, and the estimated 2006 deficit of $423 billion is projected to be the largest of all. — Melissa Bean

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

The only way government bureaucrats know of keeping prosperity going is to inflate some more - to increase the deficit or to pump more money into the system. — Henry Hazlitt

Deficit financing proper is rather the process whereby a Government spends more money that it withdraws from the economy by taxation, borrowing, running down reserves, etc.; thereby causing in most circumstances, and very acutely in ours, monetary inflation and severe pressure on the balance of payments. — John James Cowperthwaite

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

The challenge for any government is how do you do two things at the same time. How do you put money forward for things like the payroll tax holiday, for things like getting a jump-start on infrastructure, for building schools, and make the decisions for long-term deficit reduction. — Jacob Lew

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

The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the 'deficit spending' policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations. — Ludwig Von Mises

I do strongly believe myself that members of the government who sit in the House of Lords should be accountable to the elected House because otherwise there is a democratic deficit, and that is wrong. — John Bercow

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

I don't want to remember 2005 as a year that the government heaped unnecessary burdens upon American families. Stealing from the poor and middle class and giving to the rich, while increasing the deficit, is hardly responsible. — Marty Meehan

As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined. — Ron Paul

Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money,by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale. — Alan Greenspan