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
Astounding Federal Spending quotations
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Federal spending is atrocious.
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.
This welfare for wealthy companies wastes taxpayer dollars, harms the environment, and makes a mockery of the recent reductions in federal social spending programs.
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.
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.
I get so ticked off at you intellectually lazy people who think that the government is God, that every dollar they get or spend is somehow sacred. There is more fraud and waste and misuse. If the federal government were held accountable to the law as corporations are held accountable, half the federal government would be in prison.
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.
I would cap the amount of federal government can spend at 20 percent of the economy. Bring it back to 20 percent or lower. And say, we are not going to spend above that level. Democrats, they want to raise your taxes and spend more and more and turn us into an economy which is no longer driven by the private sector.
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.
Gold has intrinsic value. The problem with the dollar is it has no intrinsic value. And if the Federal Reserve is going to spend trillions of them to buy up all these bad mortgages and all other kinds of bad debt, the dollar is going to lose all of its value. Gold will store its value, and you'll always be able to buy more food with your gold.
We [Federal Government] have tried spending money.
We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.
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.
The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.
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.
Roll back federal spending to 2008 levels.
I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues in this campaign. In my opinion it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business.
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.
As quickly as you start spending federal money in large amounts, it looks like free money.
George Washington intended this to be a Federal city, and it is a Federal city, and it tingles down to the feet of every man, whether he comes from Washington State, or Los Angeles, or Texas, when he comes and walks these city streets and begins to feel that this is my city; I own a part of this Capital, and I envy for the time being those who are able to spend their time here. I quite admit that there are defects in the system of government by which Congress is bound to look after the government of the District of Columbia. It could not be otherwise under such a system, but I submit to the judgment of history that the result vindicates the foresight of the fathers.
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.
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.
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.
The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.
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.
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.
In 2001, Congress passed much needed tax relief to allow Americans to keep more of their hard earned money and spend it as they see fit - rather than how the federal government sees fit.
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.
Well, now, and there's - for every dollar the federal government spends, there's real people on the other side, and so when we talk about reductions that are going to affect providers, that's going to affect hospitals and doctors and others.
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.