Quotes & Sayings About The National Deficit

I have made mistakes - mighty big ones at that. Not the kind that would cause a national fiscal deficit a-la Manmohan Singh or ruin some unassuming person's life, but the kind that makes you go into face palm mode and want to die every time you are reminded of them. — Shuchi Singh Kalra

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

With a strong domestic economy, low national unemployment at 5 percent, and increasing retail sales, the picture should look rosy. But one look at the trade deficit changes all of that. — Jo Ann Emerson

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

The national deficit is not rising. — Ed Balls

Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as 'deficits as far as the eye can see.' But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk? — Karl Rove

The sequestration is a bad idea, all around. It is something that is out of the question. If you have spending cuts, education of our children, other investments, on the National Institutes of Health, where you are hindering growth, you're no going to reduce the deficit. — Nancy Pelosi

In the budget, the president will call for a five-year freeze on discretionary spending other than for national security. This will reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade and bring this category of spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. — Jacob Lew

The war on terrorism has made national security a legitimate concern, and a rising deficit, changes brought on by globalization and even the price of oil have thrown the nation's economic health into question. — Roger Mahony

When George Bush came into office, we had surpluses. And now we have half-a-trillion-dollar deficit annually. When George Bush came into office, our national debt was around $5 trillion. It's now over $10 trillion. We've almost doubled it. — Barack Obama

The climate, financial and national security crises are all connected. They share the same cause: Our [the USA's] absurd dependency on foreign oil. As long as we need to spend billions of dollars each year to buy foreign oil from state-run oil companies in the Persian Gulf, our problems of a trade deficit, a budget deficit and a climate crisis will persist. — Al Gore

We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid. — John Spratt

Obama seemed poised to realign American politics after his stunning 2008 victory. But the economy remains worse than even the administration's worst-case scenarios, and the long legislative battles over health care reform, financial services reform and the national debt and deficit have taken their toll. Obama no longer looks invincible. — Dee Dee Myers

I have served in the Congress during two wars and I have seen the impacts on our military, on their families and on our national deficit. — Tom Udall

The important lesson of the deficit is - and the national debt - is we have to be careful about how we're spending money. — Joseph Stiglitz