Federal Budget Quotes

I think we should balance the federal budget tomorrow. I'm optimistic. I think Americans are optimistic. We went to the moon; we can balance the federal budget. ~ Gary Johnson

A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget ... As the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance. ~ John F. Kennedy

The debate over Social Security should not be about how much we can cut from the program in order to balance the federal budget. The debate over Social Security should not be about raising the retirement age or limiting benefits. The debate over Social Security should be about retirement security. ~ Sherrod Brown

People need to remember that to balance the federal budget off the backs of the poorest people in the country is simply unacceptable. You don't pull feeding tubes from people. You don't pull the wheelchair out from under the child with muscular dystrophy. ~ Mike Huckabee

For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant. ~ David Baldacci

Those who analogize the federal budget to a family's budget must know nothing about either. ~ Robert Reich

If Congress is unable to do its job and pass a federal budget, then I do not believe we should receive a salary. ~ David Valadao

It was my privilege to serve with Paul Ryan in the House and on the Ways and Means Committee. Ryan's vast experience and bold, reform-minded ideas were always evident. His knowledge of the federal budget is widely recognized. ~ Bob Beauprez

The Republican Party is terrific at determining how a program will impact the federal budget, but we're not nearly as good as the Democrats in explaining to people how our agenda will directly benefit them and their families. ~ J. C. Watts

Polls show that Americans significantly overestimate the percentage of the federal budget allocated to foreign aid. In November 2013, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that, on average, Americans believe that 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign assistance, and more than 60 percent of people say that's too much. But in reality we spend less than 1 percent of the budget on foreign aid. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

To cut the federal budget without cutting entitlements is like giving up chocolate-chip cookies and then deciding it's OK to eat the ones that don't have any nuts. ~ Timothy Noah

The federal budget deficit is the biggest single impediment to revitalizing the American economy. ~ Alice Rivlin

Balance the federal budget now, not 15 years from now, not 20 years from now, but now. And throw out the entire federal tax system, replace it with a fair tax, a consumption tax, that by all measurements is just that. It's fair. ~ Gary Johnson

The Federal Budget can and should be made an instrument of prosperity and stability, not a deterrent to recovery. ~ John F. Kennedy

There's a phrase that critics of economic forecasting like to use: Give an economist a result you want, and he'll find the numbers to justify it. This entire city is filled with number crunchers who look at the exact same data and interpret it in widely disparate ways on everything from the federal budget deficit to the Social Security surplus." "Meaning that data can be manipulated." "Of course it can, depending on who's paying the meter and whose political agenda is being furthered, ~ David Baldacci

Obama's Democrats have become the part of no. Real cuts to federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell no. ~ Charles Krauthammer

We need to replace hyperbole with a reasonable, informed discussion about how to reinvent the federal budget with more transparency and better accountability. ~ Mike Quigley

States were barred from financing their immigration systems with specific taxes on immigrants and transportation companies, leaving the continued existence of these state institutions to the general state fisc or the generosity of private charitable organizations interested in immigrant welfare and integration. The resource strain on states and charitable organizations placed enormous pressure on Congress to enact federal law. ~ Pratheepan Gulasekaram

We thank those Senators, both Republican and Democrat, who stood firm against tremendous pressure from the Bush administration, pro-drilling members of Congress and their allies in the oil industry. They recognize that the budget is an inappropriate place to decide controversial national policy matters like America's energy policy. We urge all members of Congress to remain steadfast in their belief that the vast, unspoiled wilderness of America?s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is more than a line item in the Federal Budget. ~ Carl Pope

On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled House voted mostly along party lines tonight to pass President Bush's federal budget blueprint. This includes his big tax cut plan, partly bankrolled, critics say, through cuts in many federal aid programs for children and education. ~ Dan Rather

Romney has adopted almost every position conservatives want their candidate to espouse: He's pro-life, he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he wants to cut taxes and cut the federal budget, and he wants an unapologetic foreign policy dedicated to the proposition that this too will be the American century. ~ John Podhoretz

Most of all, however, critics of black conservatives say we've forgotten where we came from. I may forget a federal budget number or, God forbid, to set the alarm clock for my weekly 6 a.m. flight to Washington, but I know exactly where I came from. ~ J. C. Watts

Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

One of the issues that we professional newspaper columnists are required by union regulations to voice grave concern about is the federal budget deficit, which we refer to as the "mounting" deficit, because every extra word helps when you have to produce a certain number of gravely concerned newsprint inches. ~ Dave Barry

Thanks to decades of accumulated federal budget deficits and, more significantly, imprudent Medicare and Social Security policies, we've stolen almost $60 trillion from our children. ~ Steven Rattner

The entire federal budget for landslide research is $3.5 million a year - far less than the property value lost on a single day when 17 mansions slid down a hill in 2005 in Laguna Beach, Calif. ~ Bill Dedman

Innovations in science and technology are the engines of the 21st-century economy; if you care about the wealth and health of your nation tomorrow, then you'd better rethink how you allocate taxes to fund science. The federal budget needs to recognize this. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Food safety oversight is largely, but not exclusively, divided between two agencies, the FDA and the USDA. The USDA mostly oversees meat and poultry; the FDA mostly handles everything else, including pet food and animal feed. Although this division of responsibility means that the FDA is responsible for 80% of the food supply, it only gets 20% of the federal budget for this purpose. In contrast, the USDA gets 80% of the budget for 20% of the foods. This uneven distribution is the result of a little history and a lot of politics. ~ Marion Nestle

Marriage equality - I think that it's a constitutionally guaranteed right. Let's end the drug wars. Let's balance the federal budget, and that means reforming the entitlements - Medicaid, Medicare. ~ Gary Johnson

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget. ~ Matt Taibbi

Now scarcely a week goes by without a news story about the cops swooping down on some adolescent prowler who is as skilled at breaking into computer systems as defense contractors are at breaking into the Federal budget. ~ Russell Baker

The legions of reporters who cover politics don't want to quit the clash and thunder of electoral combat for the dry duty of analyzing the federal budget. As a consequence, we have created the perpetual presidential campaign. ~ Hugh Sidey

We must go through every area of the federal budget to isolate waste and abandoned projects. ~ James Lankford

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

Let's abolish the IRS, let's eliminate income tax, let's eliminate corporate tax, let's balance the federal budget, and if we need a tax, it can be one federal consumption tax. ~ Gary Johnson

Increasing access to federal student loans has been a bipartisan effort in Washington, one that I have supported. But it has created what many experts believe is a bubble in higher education, not unlike the housing bubble that preceded the financial crisis. ~ Marco Rubio

Soon, challenges against the Post's ownership of two television stations in Florida were filed with the Federal Communications Commission. The price of Post stock on the American Exchange dropped by almost 50 percent. Among the challengers - forming the organizations of 'citizens' who proposed to become the new FCC licensees - were several persons long associated with the President.
Carl Bernsein, Bob Woodward ~ Carl Bernstein

Twenty-five years ago, I created the Taxpayer Protection Pledge at the federal level. Then I brought it to the state and local level. About 97 percent of the Republicans in the House and 85 percent in the Senate have signed on, and the number of candidates who have taken the pledge is even higher. It's become a party position. ~ Grover Norquist

We need a firm cap on carbon emissions from fossil fuels. No coal, oil, or gas could enter the economy until the buyer had a permit. All permits would be auctioned by the federal government, and the number of permits auctioned would be decreased by three percent per year. Permits could be traded, but they could not be created out of whole cloth by companies that plant forests or dump iron filings at sea. ~ Denis Hayes

The middle class of America must pay some federal income taxes or this will no longer be America. ~ Frank Coyle

Not only is it possible to do lean startup in federal government, but it's the most effective way to drive change in the federal government. ~ Todd Park

Bundesbahnangestelltenwitwe (a widow of a federal railway employee), ~ Bill Bryson

Assuming that a tax increase is necessary, it is clearly preferable to impose the additional cost on land by increasing the land tax, rather than to increase the wage tax - the two alternatives open to the City (of Pittsburgh). It is the use and occupancy of property that creates the need for the municipal services that appear as the largest item in the budget - fire and police protection, waste removal, and public works. The average increase in tax bills of city residents will be about twice as great with wage tax increase than with a land tax increase. ~ Herbert Simon

Approach every film with the same enthusiasm, regardless of its budget. ~ Lou Diamond Phillips

You can have a million dollar, 20 million dollar budget or 60 million dollar budget, and if you don't have a good script, it doesn't mean a thing. ~ Tippi Hedren

It is not necessary to have an extravagant food budget in order to serve things with variety and tastefully cooked. It is not necessary to have expensive food on the plates before they can enter the dining room as things of beauty in colour and texture. Food should be served with real care as to the colour and texture on the plates, as well as with imaginative taste. This is where artistic talent and aesthetic expression and fulfillment come in. ~ Edith Schaeffer

And I like being able to go back and forth, and I don't really care if it's a small budget or big budget or studio or independent, as long as it's got a story that's compelling and there's enough money to make the picture. ~ Griffin Dunne

With every bathroom renovation, there are three areas that I focus on: budget, function and style. ~ Candice Olson

I finally decided to adopt guidelines rather than set a budget. If it could be done at home, skip it. If I had done it before, skip it. If the odds were that I would never have another chance to do it, do it. Scrimp on meals, transportation and accommodations. ~ Kristine K. Stevens

There ought always to be a constitutional method of giving efficacy to constitutional provisions. What for instance would avail restrictions on the authority of the state legislatures, without some constitutional mode of enforcing the observance of them? ... This power must either be a direct negative on the state laws, or an authority in the federal courts, to over-rule such as might be in manifest contravention of the articles of union. ~ James Madison

You want to balance the budget in this country? We change the salary structure for Congress and the President. Every year they don't balance the budget, we don't pay them. ~ Daniel Keys Moran

Our fiat currency is under increasing stress with our large and growing trade deficits. We have a federal deficit that is calculated in the trillions when we take into account the net present value of the future Social Security and Medicaid obligations we are creating today. ~ George Noory

I'm loving doing Outlander. We've got a great cast and we're up in the Scottish Highlands. [ ... ] It's big budget, they're spending a lot of money on it. They're going for a very gritty and realistic portrayal of the Highlands and I play Dougal MacKenzie, the War Chieftain of Clan MacKenzie. As that implies, he's quite the serious character. There's lots of political intrigue, there's romance, there's adventure and action and there's time-travel. ~ Graham McTavish

Each year, I await with dread the federal government's catalog of endangered and threatened species in the Hawaiian Islands, where I was raised and where I live. ~ Susanna Moore

It's not about what the speaker wants. It's not about necessarily what I want. There's two other principles involved here. It's what the constituents in my district want, and they didn't want to raise the debt ceiling unless there were significant structural reforms and spending cuts to help us balance our budget. ~ Tim Huelskamp

It is the policy of the United States not to engage in torture, and there are federal criminal laws that prohibit torture. ~ John Yoo

What happened was that for every $100 of money, by which I mean the cash that people keep in their pockets, and the deposits they have in the bank, for every $100 of money that there was in 1929, by 1933 there was only $67. The Federal Reserve allowed the quantity of money to decline by a third. While, at all times, it had the possibilities and the power of preventing that from happening. ~ Milton Friedman

I think that the question is very clear-cut, not only as a matter of ethics, but also as a matter of law, that a lawyer should not be aiding and abetting in a fraudulent scheme, and part of that aiding and abetting would be to draw up subsequent documents in order to conceal the true nature of the scheme from federal investigators. ~ Viet D. Dinh

Avis Budget, recognising the emerging threat, spent $500m last year buying Zipcar, the world's largest example of a "car club", a form of sharing in which vehicles are parked on the streets and users can rent them, using a swipe-card, by the hour. In theory, the giant hire firms are well-placed to operate the car-club model: conventional rentals peak during the week, whereas club-car use peaks at weekends, so they can achieve high utilisation rates by shifting cars between the two services. Car clubs and other forms of sharing are proving especially attractive to young drivers. That is encouraging the carmakers to return to a business they have dabbled in before (Hertz has been owned by both Ford and GM; and GM once part-owned Avis). ~ Anonymous

I support responsible spending, and balancing the budget, but this tax cut and the budget cuts of last month accomplish neither of these goals. ~ Marty Meehan

Even though New York is the safest big city in the nation, there are still far too many illegal guns on our streets. Nearly all of them arrive from out of state - and most are sold by a small group of rogue gun dealers who refuse to obey federal laws. ~ Michael Bloomberg

Applying the right procedures and policies to asset management allows IT to create a realistic budget with few surprises, and keep best practices to adapt to "continuous changes. ~ Pearl Zhu

As we understand it, everything is in the Bible for one reason – to teach us a lesson. Thus, in the beginning of the Bible, we see how God budgets His time for labor, and He saves the seventh day for rest, or retirement. The concept of budgeting was created by God to give us a life of prosperity in the world He created for us, so we should learn to budget as a way to emulate God in our financial life. ~ Celso Cukierkorn

Public policy in the twentieth century was about protecting and expanding the social compact, based on recognition that effective government at the federal level provides rules and services and safety measures that contribute to a better society. ~ Carl Bernstein

When the legislation that passed in the farm bill that says that it's a federal crime to watch animals fight or to induce someone else to watch an animal fight but it's not a federal crime to induce somebody to watch people fighting, there's something wrong with the priorities of people that think like that. ~ Steve King

All school districts receive funds from the federal government, through the Department of Education, to support anti-drug education efforts. ~ John Walters

Federal laws, including those that made so many people immigrate without documents, gutted the enforcement power of the Department of Labor and created a lower minimum wage for tipped workers than for everybody else, reinforcing the industry's ~ Rinku Sen

Reagan was president and had Democrats control the House and Senate, and they reformed the tax code. Clinton was president, and he had Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole; they reformed welfare and balanced the budget. ~ Kevin McCarthy

Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job. ~ Paul Davies

From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by the housing bubble, every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts. ~ Ron Paul

When you look at 'Obamacare,' the Congressional Budget Office has said it will cost $2,500 a year more than traditional insurance. So it's adding to cost. And as a matter of fact, when the president ran for office, he said that, by this year, he would have brought down the cost of insurance for each family by $2,500 a family. Instead, it's gone up by that amount. So it's expensive. Expensive things hurt families. So that's one reason I don't want it. ~ Mitt Romney

The federal government began investigating allegations of fraud against the Coalition Provisional Authority, a U.S. contractor accused in a bid-rigging operation involving millions of dollars. Asked to comment, a spokesperson for Halliburton said, 'Millions? With an M? That is adorable.' ~ Amy Poehler

Many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later,
oftener sooner than late,
is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The 2006 federal Internet gaming statute is not ambiguous. It does not prohibit gambling on fantasy sports. ~ Eric Schneiderman

Under the constitution, there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century. Yet today, fueled by the federal government's misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the States where they have no legal authority. The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive. ~ Ron Paul