160 Government Spending Quotes
Following is our list of government spending quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about government budget.
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Famous Government Spending Quotes
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
Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. — Allan H. Meltzer
We need to stop spending money we don't have. — Paul Ryan
People like entitlements. That's why we spend so much on them. — Tucker Carlson
The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much. — Ronald Reagan
The last four secretaries of defense have pointed out that defense spending creates jobs. So do pornography, prostitution, and narcotics. — Michael Parenti
The public understands that the government is broke, but many still don't want to cut programs they enjoy or depend on. — Tucker Carlson
Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody. — Calvin Coolidge
It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money. — P. J. O'Rourke
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. — Samuel Johnson
It is the aim of good government to stimulate production, of bad government to encourage consumption. — Jean-Baptiste Say
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
It's a shame that we have to use whatever leverage we have in Congress to get the president to deal with the biggest problem confronting our future. And that's our excessive spending. — Mitch McConnell
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. — Ronald Reagan
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. — Ronald Reagan
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 Budget Quotes
If congress refuses to obey its own rules. If congress refuses to pass a balanced budget. If congress refuses to read the Bills. Then I say, sweep the place clean, limit their terms, and send them HOME! — Rand Paul
There is no real justification for a requirement that a budget of any sort should be balanced, except as a rallying point for those who seek to hamstring government. — William Vickrey
Ed Balls has made it crystal clear that, left to its own devices, a Labour government would simply carry on with the same budget policies as the Tories. — Nicola Sturgeon
It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t. — Paul Krugman
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
If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences. — Henry Hazlitt
The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife. — Thomas Jefferson
A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. — John F. Kennedy
Economics and finance is the final frontier for women; it’s the last thing they will conquer because controlling finance is at the heart of everything in government. — Liz Truss
The government can access these funds but only following approval by the parliament to support our budget requirements and investments in infrastructure development, education, public health, and so on. — Jose Ramos-Horta
Deficit Spending Quotes
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
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
Government Debt Quotes
Every American born today owes $43,000 to the federal government the day she or he is born. And we are transferring a tremendous amount of debt to the new generation, much of it owed to overseas creditors who expect to be repaid by our children with interest. — Mark Kirk
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure... It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. — Barack Obama
We don't need new taxes. We need new taxpayers, people that are gainfully employed, making money and paying into the tax system. And then we need a government that has the discipline to take that additional revenue and use it to pay down the debt and never grow it again. — Marco Rubio
As to Taxes, they are evidently inseparable from Government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine. — Alexander Hamilton
The real point about credit bubbles is that they are fueled by the promise of government actions, not the reality of what has been achieved. — Russell Napier
A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property - an unpaid tax bill. — Hans F. Sennholz
We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. — Thomas Jefferson
These subsidies from four European governments, which include aircraft launch assistance, capital injections, debt forgiveness, have enabled Airbus to develop and range market airliners well below cost. — Norm Dicks
The Government of Iraq also owes a debt to the American and coalition forces who are fighting the insurgency and helping put that country back together after decades of repression. — Ike Skelton
We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out.... We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. — Mary Elizabeth Lease
Military Spending Quotes
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.
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
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
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
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
Education Spending Quotes
Education is, quite simply, peace-building by another name. It is the most effective form of defense spending there is. — Kofi Annan
I admire the good samaritan, but I don't want to be one.I don't want to spend my life picking up people by the side of the road after they have been beaten up and robbed.I want to change the Jericho road, so that everybody has an opportunity for a job, education, security, health. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated. — Al McGuire
The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash. — Sergei Rachmaninoff
Our life is like a block of ice which is melting away every moment. Before it spends itself, devote it to the service of others. Education in Human Values is designed to prepare everyone for this life of dedicated service. — Sathya Sai Baba
Divinity of art, it's such a mystery. How to convince people that no matter how much money you can spend on education and art education especially, that it implants, it directs a young person for the rest of their lives, and always in the most humane and positive and dignified manner. — Mikhail Baryshnikov
Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life. — Henry Latham Doherty
The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitations services and basic education to every person on the planet. And we wonder why terrorists attack us. — John Perkins
Most of your competition spend their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn't. — Seth Godin
I'm a man of some intelligence. I've had some education, passed the bar, practiced law. I've been a teacher and I deal with men of substance, statesman, business leaders, the clergy... So why do I spend my time arguing with Dizzy Dean? — Branch Rickey
Spending Cuts Quotes
Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense. — Ethan Coen
I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV. — Bill Gates
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. — Jean Cocteau
I would spend my nights at home but if it means contention. I'd rather be alone tell the service man cut the phones. — Buju Banton
The sources of deflation are not a mystery. Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand.. a drop in spending so severe that producers must cut prices on an ongoing basis in order to find buyers. — Ben Bernanke
Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America's global enemies sense a failure of will. — Ben Shapiro
Where is the politician who has not promised to fight to the death for lower taxes- and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that make tax cuts impossible? — Barry Goldwater
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
Frugality, quite simply, is about choosing the things you love enough to spend extravagantly on—and then cutting costs mercilessly on the things you don’t love. — Ramit Sethi
I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. ... because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. — Milton Friedman
Defense Spending Quotes
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
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
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
Only five NATO countries, including the United States, are currently meeting their minimum requirement to spend 2% of GDP on defense. — Donald Trump
Government Welfare Quotes
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one. — James Madison
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. — James Madison
The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need. It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion. — Molly Ivins
I thought the function of the government was to promote the general welfare, not to provide it. — Ronald Reagan
The essential role of government is to create the conditions under which people can live fulfilling lives. — Martha C. Nussbaum
While anyone who practices a religion has the right to their own religious truths, it doesn't give them the right to violate the welfare of another human or an animal. So, where necessary, it is the task of the government to intervene and curb the freedom of religion. — Marianne Thieme
There’s huge amounts of good that can be done by a government that works constructively versus a zero-sum vision of government. — Sam Bankman-Fried
In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several states, a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects. — James Madison
If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost. — Barack Obama
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More Government 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
The end of World War II and the dismantling of the New Deal meant the U.S. government cut its spending by an astonishing 75% between 1944 and 1948, and it also removed most price controls for good measure. And yet, the U.S. economy witnessed an extraordinary boom during these years. The roughly ten million men who were mobilized for the war came back home and were almost seamlessly absorbed into the labor force, as economic production boomed, flying in the face of all Keynesian predictions and utterly obliterating the ridiculous notion that the level of spending is what determines output in the economy. — Saifedean Ammous
The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat. — Ben Shapiro
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
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
Everything we know about human nature and about government tells us that individuals using their own money will achieve far more good for themselves and far more for others than politicians spending money they didn't have to work to earn. — Harry Browne
The biggest problem confronting the country is our excessive spending. If we're not going to deal with it now, when are we going to deal with it? And we've watched the government explode over the last four years. We've dealt with the revenue issue. — Mitch McConnell
We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government: we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it. — George Farquhar
Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments. — Ayn Rand
The truth is, the greatest tool to lift children and families from poverty is one that decreases the probability of child poverty by 82%. But it isn't a government spending program. It's called marriage. — Marco Rubio
What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far, far from it, but there is no free lunch, as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble. — Arthur Laffer
There is nothing inherently fair about equalizing incomes. If the government penalizes you for working harder than somebody else, that is unfair. If you save your money but retire with the same pension as a free-spending neighbor, that is also unfair. — Arthur C. Brooks
When they call the slightest spending reductions 'painful', we will say 'If government spending prevents pain, why are we suffering so much of it?' And 'If you want to experience real pain, just stay on the track we are on.' — Mitch Daniels
For more than forty years, the United States Congress has shamelessly used payroll taxes intended for Social Security to fund big government spending. — Mike Pence
The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. Be aware when things are out of balance. Stay centered within the Tao. When rich speculators prosper While farmers lose their land; when government officials spend money on weapons instead of cures; when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn- all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao. — Lao Tzu
The difference between them and us is that we want to check government spending and they want to spend government checks. — Ronald Reagan
If credit expansion, protectionism, and government spending were a path to prosperity, mankind would have long ago created heaven on earth. — Llewellyn Rockwell
Along this road of spending, the government either takes over, which is Socialism, or dictates institutional and economic life, which is Fascism. — Herbert Hoover
Since taking office, President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25 percent for domestic government agencies - an 84 percent increase when you include the failed stimulus. All of this new government spending was sold as 'investment.' — Paul Ryan
When you start cutting government expenditure, at some point you are cutting essential services rather than excessive services. So you have to take into account the social costs involved in cutting government spending. — Raghuram Rajan
The tax rate increases reduce economic growth; they shrink the pie; they cause more poverty, more despair, more unemployment, which are all things government is trying to alleviate with spending. — Arthur Laffer
Social Security is not just another government spending program. It is a promise from generation to generation. — Hank Johnson
If you spend enough time in or around Washington, you'll meet amazing people who work for the government. — Judy Woodruff
Living standards in both the public and private sector have to be brought down. The private sector has to sell more abroad and consume less at home. The government sector has to get closer to just spending what it can collect in taxes. — John Redwood
Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. — Ludwig von Mises
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