131 Defense Spending Quotes
Following is our list of defense spending quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about defense spending cut.
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Famous Defense Spending Quotes
The defense budget is more than a piggy bank for people who want to get busy beating swords into pork barrels. — George H. W. Bush
Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America's global enemies sense a failure of will. — Ben Shapiro
The last four secretaries of defense have pointed out that defense spending creates jobs. So do pornography, prostitution, and narcotics. — Michael Parenti
This nation can no longer tolerate the autonomous conduct of any single service. A waste of the resources of America in spendthrift defense is an invitation to disaster for America. — Louis A. Johnson
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Education is, quite simply, peace-building by another name. It is the most effective form of defense spending there is. — Kofi Annan
In this ever-changing world, it's more important than ever that our top-notch military continues to receive the resources needed to serve and protect our country. — Max Baucus
I support development and deployment of a limited national missile defense. Few if any of our duties surpass our obligation to provide for the common defense of our nation. — Joe Lieberman
Our military should spare no expense to ensure the safety of our troops, particularly as they confront a hostile insurgency and roadside bombs throughout Iraq. — Christopher Dodd
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. — Hunter S. Thompson
Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs. — Bernie Sanders
It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends 500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only 53 annually on the victims of poverty. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
We are the biggest donor to the United Nations, contributing 22 percent of the regular operating budget and nearly 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. — Cliff Stearns
National defense is the sacred duty of the young and all other people. — Kim Jong Il
Short Defense Spending Quotes
- The world is over-armed and peace is under-funded. — Ban Ki-moon
- People like entitlements. That's why we spend so much on them. — Tucker Carlson
- We need to stop spending money we don't have. — Paul Ryan
- Defense is superior to opulence. — Adam Smith
Defense Quotes
If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury. Therefore what he must be taught to fear is his victim. — Jeff Cooper
When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government. — Alexander Hamilton
Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace. — James Madison
If you find yourself under lethal attack don't be kind. Be harsh. Be tough. Be ruthless. — Jeff Cooper
Karate is not a game. It is not a sport. It is not even a system of self-defense. Karate is half physical exercise and half spiritual. The karateist who has given the necessary years of exercise and meditation is a tranquil person. He is unafraid. He can even be calm in a burning building. — Mas Oyama
Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense. — Ida B. Wells
We are the only people on Earth asked to guarantee the security of our occupier...while Israel is the only country that calls for defense from its victims. — Hanan Ashrawi
I don't think I was awake for much of my childhood. I did a lot of napping. This might have been a defensive measure against encroaching depression. Until about the age of eleven or twelve, I had zero interests other than trying to steal gumballs from supermarket gumball machines. — Michael Ian Black
Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who kept their swords. — Benjamin Franklin
The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry. — William F. Buckley
Defense Spending Cut Quotes
I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending. There will be no easy off ramps on this one. — Barack Obama
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
I cannot in good conscience vote in favor of tax cuts, irrespective of their size, or to which segment of the population they are targeted. Nor can I support any spending increases that are not related to improving our nation's defense from the obvious and serious threats facing us today. — John McCain
In the party of Lincoln and Reagan and much of the donor class, the defense of human life is what they think loses elections. They think we need to spend time on really popular ideas, like cutting your mom's Social Security check. — Gary Bauer
Cut defense spending as part of cutting all federal spending. — Rand Paul
The anti-tax-cut, soft-on-defense, big-spending Democrats will take the Democratic Party to the edge and maybe over. — Joe Lieberman
Current levels of Pentagon spending may not be able to support current defense strategy. The answer to this problem is right before our eyes: cut the money and change the strategy. That would be acting in the name of a conception of national security that was truly strategic. — William Hartung
Military Spending Quotes
General Flynn was investigating money laundering through military operations at the Pentagon before the Deep State had him removed. Today the Pentagon cannot account for $3-Trillion. We are spending over a Trillion dollars plus to service our sovereign debt. Flynn was right! — Douglas Macgregor
World military spending has now risen to over $1.2 trillion. This incredible sum represents 2.5 per cent of GDP (global gross domestic product). Even if 1 per cent of it were redirected towards development, the world would be much closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. — Ban Ki-moon
The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood. — Michael Hastings
If somewhere is a deficiency the normal American answer would have been well then, let's spend some more money, build some more weapons and deploy them. That's the normal way of thinking of the military, in America not only but also all over the place, but America or Russia or other countries. — Helmut Schmidt
National security - the military is the first thing we should spend money on. You have to fully fund that first. And then you should be paying for everything else. — Marco Rubio
While our nation faces many challenges that must be met regarding homeland security and our military readiness, it is imperative that we live within our means and wisely spend taxpayer dollars. — Michael Crapo
While our nation faces many challenges that must be met regarding homeland security and our military readiness, it is imperative that we live within our means and wisely spend taxpayer dollars. — Michael Dean Crapo
I do not believe that we must maintain a bloated military budget which spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined and may lead us to perpetual warfare in the Middle East. — Bernie Sanders
Together, we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft. — Robert Kennedy
Tariffs, government contracts, naval and military spending, nationalized industries, tax policy, social welfare, the legal privileging of labor unions were among the means at the disposal of the governing class to exploit the public at large for the benefits of its various clienteles. — Ralph Raico
Military Budget Quotes
The administration has a disturbing pattern of behavior when it comes to budgeting not only for the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but also for military requirements not directly related to these conflicts. — Russ Feingold
My primary platform is to cut the costs on the military. Again, what we were told was a peace dividend after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We were going to cut our military budget from about $600 billion a year to $200 billion a year. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Bill Clinton kept funding Star Wars. He took the biggest military budget to Congress in history. He routinely bombed Iraq, and he kept the barbaric sanctions in place. He's really played his part. The George W. Bush gang has taken it just a little further. — John Pilger
Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs. — Herman Kahn
Both [Donald] Trump and Hillary [Clinton] want bigger military budgets and Hillary supports President Obama's one trillion dollar expenditure to so-called upgrade nuclear weapons. P — Ralph Nader
According to the National Priorities Project, military expenditures are 54% of the budget. The next biggest line item is 7%. And there are a whole bunch of 7 percents. So in short, we have a military budget surrounded by a lot of footnotes. This is not serving us well. — Jill Stein
The reality is, the United States has global interests. Our defense budget is about the same as the defense budgets or military budgets of every other country in the world put together. — Robert M. Gates
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
The only way you can do that decrease taxes, balance the budget, and increase military spending is with mirrors, and thats what it would take. — John B. Anderson
Deficit Spending Quotes
Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. — Allan H. Meltzer
We think we can't survive without deficit spending - but we soon won't be able to survive with deficit spending, either. — Tony Blankley
I'm finding myself really angry over spending and the deficit. I'm finding myself really angry over what's happening in the Middle East, the decision to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. I'm angry about cap and trade. And I've been on record for a long time on the failed war on drugs. — Gary Johnson
Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers. — Ron Paul
Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. — Alan Greenspan
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
We don't need more politicians insisting we have deficits because you're not taxed enough. Those deficits ballooned from an economy that didn't grow enough and from 50 years of government spending too much. — Ronald Reagan
Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth. — Ronald Reagan
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 government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect. — Sam Ewing
Federal Spending Quotes
When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. — 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 Levin
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
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War. — Michael Badnarik
The federal investment in finding cures for cancer - $3 billion annually [as of 1999] - is less than ... zero ... point ... zero ... zero ... zero ... four ... percent of our gross domestic product, or about one-seventh of what Americans spend on beauty products. — Michael Milken
Federal spending is atrocious. — Jason Chaffetz
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
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 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
Government Spending Quotes
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. — James Madison
When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident. — Ronald Reagan
Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity. — Arthur Laffer
Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? — Ronald Reagan
State capitalism is about more than emergency government spending, implementation of more intelligent regulation, or a stronger social safety net. It's about state dominance of economic activity for political gain. — Ian Bremmer
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. — James Madison
The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending. — Thomas Sowell
Unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcy - the cure is not more government spending, but helping businesses create jobs. — Brian Sandoval
Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life. — Jay Sekulow
Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them. — Margaret Thatcher
People Writing About Defense Spending
More Defense Spending Quotes
As it stands, a large number of firms in all advanced economies specialize in warfare as a business, and are thus reliant on perpetuating war to continue being in business. They live off government spending exclusively, and have their entire existence reliant on there being perpetual wars necessitating ever‐larger arms spending. In the United States, whose defense spending is almost equal to that of the rest of the planet combined, these industries have a vested interest in keeping the U.S. government involved in some form of military adventure or other. This, more than any strategic, cultural, ideological, or security operations, explains why the United States has been involved in so many conflicts in parts of the world that cannot possibly have any bearing on the life of the average American. Only with unsound money can these firms grow to such enormous magnitude that they can influence the press, academia, and think tanks to continuously beat the drums of more war. — Saifedean Ammous
I spend a great deal of my personal time trying to figure out one thing, which is, at a given point in time, how should you balance aggressiveness and defensiveness in your portfolio. — Howard Marks
I talked to General Downer about some of the funding about the National Guard and some of the civil defense workers, the firefighters, the police officers, and the way that FEMA is making them spend that money. We have got a problem there. — Lynn Westmoreland
Much of the Greek coastline comprises steep cliffs and there are few coastal plains for agriculture. Inland are more steep cliffs, rivers that will not allow transportation, and few wide, fertile valleys. There is too little good agricultural land for Greece to become a major agricultural exporter, or to develop more than a handful of major urban areas containing highly educated, highly skilled, and technologically advanced populations. Its situation is further exacerbated by its location, with Athens positioned at the tip of the peninsula, almost cut off from land trade with Europe. It is reliant on the Aegean Sea for access to maritime trade in the region — but across that sea lies Turkey, a large potential enemy. Greece spends a vast amount of euros, which it doesn’t have, on defense. There are about 1,400 Greek islands 6,000 if you include various rocks sticking out of the Aegean of which approximately 200 are inhabited. It takes a decent navy just to patrol this territory, never mind one strong enough to defer any attempt to take the islands over. The result is a huge cost in military spending that Greece doesn’t have. During the Cold War, the Americans, and to a lesser extent, the British were content to underwrite some of the military requirements in order to keep the Soviet Union out of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. When the Cold War ended, so did the checks. — Tim Marshall
If our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.' — Mitch Daniels
If I was mentoring a young fighter, I'd tell him to spend more time on boxing. That doesn't mean I would ignore kickboxing - you still need to learn the defenses - but in stand-up, it's hard to beat good, solid boxing. — Chael Sonnen
Today, the US spends less on defense as a percentage of our economy than we did at any time since he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the world's only superpower, that is an invitation to very serious trouble. — Steve Forbes
After September 11, it became unpatriotic to question any homeland-security or defense spending, and that let things get out of control. — Jeff Flake
I think we will have to spend more on defense, for infrastructure, for extension of the broadband network and also for domestic security. — Wolfgang Schauble
Cyber Command is supposed to be defending our critical infrastructure at home, but they are spending so much time looking at how to attack networks, how to break systems, and how to turn things off. I don't think it adds up as representing a defensive team. — Edward Snowden
For me, I think being a conservative means you are focused on all four key principles: strong defense, lower taxes, less spending, and defending traditional American values. — Jim Jordan
Only five NATO countries, including the United States, are currently meeting their minimum requirement to spend 2% of GDP on defense. — Donald Trump
You have the need and the right to spend part of your life caring for your soul. It is not easy. You have to resist the demands of the work-oriented, often defensive, element in your psyche that measures life only in terms of output -- how much you produce -- not in terms of the quality of your life experiences. To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution. — Jean Shinoda Bolen
But if our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.' — Mitch Daniels
Defense spending as a share of the economy dropped significantly during the early 1990s, and that was one of the things, along with other policy changes, that put us back on the path to a balanced budget. — Peter Orszag
My submission to you is we're fighting the war on terror not overseas but in our own streets, and we'd be spending vast more fortunes to try to be a defensive country to protect ourselves rather than an offensive country to spread democracy wherever people yearn for it. — Johnny Isakson
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
It is hard for a black man to just be himself. We spend so much time in defense of something that is indefensible because there is nothing to defend. — Kevin Eubanks
Action had to be taken in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, but I am very concerned about the current administration's rhetoric and apparent zeal to expand military action to other places. I'm afraid that terrorism is being used as an excuse, not only for possible military action in such places as Iraq, Iran, and the Philippines, but also for exorbitant increases in defense spending that have nothing to do with terrorism. — Oscar Arias
I actually believe that we need missile defense, because of Iran and North Korea and the potential for them to obtain or to launch nuclear weapons, but I also believe that, when we are only spending a few hundred million dollars on nuclear proliferation, then we're making a mistake. — Barack Obama
The importance of strengthening Euro-Atlantic security: the growing dangers pile pressure on our rules-based international system, so we need to do more to strengthen NATO, the bedrock of our defense - not just upping spending, but making the alliance more agile and more capable of tackling dangers from all directions. — James Mattis
After many, many years of decline in defense spending across Europe and Canada, in 2016, we saw the first significant increase. We still have a long way to go, but at least European allies have kind of started move in the right direction. — Jens Stoltenberg
I suspect that Donald Trump is going to be very tough with those countries that don't spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. He will ask them why should we allow a free-ride policy. — Newt Gingrich
Russia is modernizing its nuclear systems. They're moving toward more effective tactical nuclear systems. They're moving toward delivery systems designed to evade anti-ballistic missile defenses. The Russians are investing, by the way, in robotic weapons, including a potential robotic tank. Their investment in new technology, I suspect, outweighs all of the European defense research and development spending combined. — Newt Gingrich
[Hillary Clinton] is talking about sequester. She's talking about defense spending freezes. He's talking about releasing this sequester, increasing defense spending, increasing the military, increasing our footprint in the world. — Eric Bolling
Today, I wanted to spend some time reading and responding to comments of fans on my Facebook page. Yes, there are great comments, but there are also a lot of people who are very opinionated and judgmental. So, initially, when I read these judgmental comments, I don't feel vulnerable, but rather I get defensive. But once I get past that anger, it sort of becomes hurt. It becomes pain. — Matisyahu
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
Obama and his Democrats need to be placed on the defensive. They are the primary drivers of this spending; they are the obstructers of entitlement reform and the national debt continues to burn while they fiddle. — David Limbaugh
Historians will not fail to note that a people who could spend $300 billion on defense refused to spend a tiny fraction of that total to keep their libraries open in the evening. — Daniel J. Boorstin
It amazes me that we spend 20% of the US budget on defense and far-off wars, and not on fighting cancer, disease, and aging. — Zoltan Istvan
We need an adequate defense, but every arms dollar we spend above adequacy has a long-term weakening effect upon the nation and its security. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Now all of us deplore this vast military spending. Yet, in the face of the Soviet attitude, we realize its necessity. Whatever the cost, America will keep itself secure. But in the process we must not, by our own hand, destroy or distort the American system. This we could do by useless overspending. I know one sure way to overspend. That is by overindulging sentimental attachments to outmoded military machines and concepts. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
I don't think the press has done a very good job dealing with government spending.The Defense Department with the $9,500 toilet seat, that's not the problem anymore. Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are the problem. That's us. That's our generation. There the press never says a word. — Dave Barry
The most cost-effective move we could make in defense spending would be to shift the focus of CIA operations, giving this agency the directive to make trouble for the Soviet Union. — John P. Wheeler III
To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above. — Ben Bernanke
Seneca's virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary. — Michel de Montaigne
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