Government Programs Quotes

We should - we will - welcome people of faith into the political process ... It is essential that believers enter the arena. Your involvement in politics helps determine how well our democracy works. We have finally learned that government programs cannot solve our problems. Government can hand out money, but government cannot put hope in our hearts or a sense of purpose in our lives. ~ George W. Bush

My point here is to insist that the rich should pay their way, and that they can easily afford to do so. All of the angst of canceling vital government programs to close the deficit is a charade put on by the rich for the rich. With a fair tax structure and a just contribution of the rich to the rest of society, we can afford a truly civilized America. Let ~ Jeffrey D. Sachs

Incentives aren't the only thing that matter for economic growth. Opportunity is also crucial, and extreme inequality deprives many people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and government programs that reduce inequality can make the nation as a whole richer by reducing that waste. ~ Paul Krugman

It is our character that supports the promise of our future - far more than particular government programs or policies. ~ William Bennett

One American in seven has no coverage, and one in three younger than sixty-five will lose coverage at some point in the next two years. These are people who aren't poor or old enough to qualify for government programs but whose jobs aren't good enough to provide benefits either. ~ Atul Gawande

The widespread enthusiasm for reducing government taxes and other impositions is not matched by a comparable enthusiasm for eliminating government programs - except programs that benefit other people. The ~ Milton Friedman

The politician's promises of yesterday are the taxes of today. ~ Mackenzie King

Research and development needs permanent tax credits to build the technology that spurs our growth. But no government programs alone can get America's students to study more science and math; parents must push and help their children to meet this goal. ~ Ernest Istook

The only things that are immortal in this world are government programs and cancer cells in petri dishes. ~ Jim Babka

By sending the contradictory message that the famous are just plain folks on Mount Olympus, America has forged a relentless tension between loftiness and accessibility. Stir in the fact that the inborn talent and intelligence needed to achieve fame are immune to distributive tinkering by government programs and you have a definition of fame certain to produce envious rage: somebody screwed democracy. ~ Florence King

[A]ffirmative action in the United States has made blacks ... who have largely lifted themselves out of poverty, look like people who owe their rise to affirmative action and other government programs. ~ Thomas Sowell

And the whole mess had been made possible by middle America's relentless appetite - for bigger houses, bigger portfolios, bigger government programs, bigger everything, and damn the long-term cost. ~ Ross Douthat

A politician who commends himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to do good with other peoples' money. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

despite professing a deep distrust of traditional institutions of authority such as governments – conspiracy theories actually reveal an extraordinary faith in the organizational aptitude and institutional discipline of such bodies. Consider the scheming, forward planning, and perpetual fidelity to an agenda that would be required for governments and/or military operations to prosecute an effective conspiracy. Surely the effort involved in a four-and- a-half-decade intergovernmental ruse required to fake the Apollo 11 moon landing would dwarf the cost and organization of a moon landing itself. The conspiracy would be, in many ways, a grander accomplishment than the space exploration it purportedly fabricates. (Then again, perhaps the conspiracist counter is that the substantial sums once diverted to NASA are now being allocated to government programs designed to fake all levels of space exploration...) ~ Chris Fleming

We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma. ~ Chuck Grassley

Now the proposal is yet again another $150 billion before we start to think about a freeze. But $150 billion spent on more government programs; monies being created to direct and what kind of jobs that Washington thinks ought to be created. Come on. I mean there is a government that can help, and the government can also hurt. ~ Eric Cantor

In the nature of things, those who have no property and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it becomes clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at times, for violence and revolution. ~ Daniel Webster

If you are stuck in circumstances in which it takes Herculean efforts to get through the day - doing low-income work, obeying an authoritarian boss, buying clothes for the children, dealing with school issues, paying the rent or mortgage, fixing the car, negotiating with a spouse, paying taxes, and caring for older parents - it is not easy to pay close attention to larger political issues. Indeed you may wish that these issues would take care of themselves. It is not a huge jump from such a wish to become attracted to a public philosophy, spouted regularly at your job and on the media, that economic life would regulate itself automatically if only the state did not repeatedly intervene in it in clumsy ways. Now underfunded practices such as the license bureau, state welfare, public health insurance, public schools, public retirement plans, and the like begin to appear as awkward, bureaucratic organizations that could be replaced or eliminated if only the rational market were allowed to take care of things impersonally and quietly, as it were. Certainly such bureaucracies are indeed often clumsy. But more people are now attracted to compare that clumsiness to the myth of how an impersonal market would perform if it took on even more assignments and if state regulation of it were reduced even further. So a lot of "independents" and "moderates" may become predisposed to the myth of the rational market in part because the pressures of daily life encourage them to seek comfort i ~ William E. Connolly

This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor's car won't start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one ... ~ Garrison Keillor

Social security is the most successful government program in our nation's history. We are not going to cut social security! We are going to expand social security! ~ Bernie Sanders

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! ~ Ronald Reagan

Once we realize that government doesn't work, we'll know that the only way to improve government is by reducing its size - by doing away with laws, by getting rid of programs, by making government spend and tax less, by reducing government as far as we can. ~ Harry Browne

People hired by government know who is their benefactor. People who lose their jobs or fail to get them because of the government program do not know that that is the source of their problem. The good effects are visible. The bad effects are invisible. The good effects generate votes. The bad effects generate discontent, which is as likely to be directed at private business as at the government. ~ Milton Friedman

Salvation by society failed the most where it promised the most, in the communist countries. But it also failed in the West. Practically no government program enacted since the 1950s in the Western world - or in the communist countries - has been successful. ~ Peter Drucker

Look at government programs for the past fifty years. Every single one - except warfare - achieved the exact opposite of its announced goal. ~ Peter Drucker

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Unlike most government programs, Social Security and, in part, Medicare are funded by payroll taxes dedicated specifically to them. Some of the tax revenue pays for current benefits; anything that's left over goes into trust funds for the future. The programs were designed this way for political reasons. ~ James Surowiecki

Taking money from job creating entrepreneurs and giving it to ever-failing government programs has to be the ultimate in economic illiteracy. ~ James Cook

The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a Government Program ~ Ronald Reagan

We've been looking in all of the wrong places for help in fighting this battle for reconciliation. We've sought help from social service agencies and government programs. But this is something that requires divine power. ~ John M. Perkins

There has never been a period in American history when it made sense to be anti-government. We may not like certain elected officials, laws, or government programs; but government simply provides the framework with which the people provide order and necessities for themselves. ~ Michael Douglas Gilbert

It is an expensive government program with the power to kill people. ~ L. Brent Bozell, Jr.

Pugsley's First Law of Government: All government programs accomplish the opposite of what they are designed to achieve. ~ John Pugsley

The measure of a man is not how great his faith is, but how great his love is. We must not let government programs disconnect our souls from each other. ~ J. C. Watts

Every effort needs to be made to try and offset the costs of Katrina and Rita by reductions in other government programs, especially those that are wasteful, duplicative and ineffective. ~ Ben Bernanke

Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream. And our current government programs, offer at best only a partial solution. They help people deal with poverty, but they do not help them escape it. ~ Marco Rubio

The government is not your salvation. The government is not your road to prosperity. Hard work, education will take you far beyond what any government program can ever promise. ~ Mia Love

I saw what government programs were and how they were executed. In some cases, they were executed beautifully, but in others, there was tremendous waste. ~ Gwynne Shotwell

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. ~ Milton Friedman

People were tired of wasteful government programs and welfare chiselers; and they were angry about the constant spiral of taxes and government regulations, arrogant bureaucrats, and public officials who thought all of mankind's problems could be solved by throwing the taxpayers' dollars at them. ~ Ronald Reagan

You know, Floridians, we've paid into Social Security. Like a lot of other government programs, we sent money to D.C. We expect to get that money back. We expect that our Social Security is real. So, we have to fix Social Security. ~ Rick Scott

We believe that only government has the capacity
not to mention the political and moral responsibility
to promote the general welfare.
Father Kramer as quoted in Sweet Charity? ~ Janet Poppendieck

Failure of government programs prompts more determined effort, while the loss of liberty is ignored or rationalized away ... whether is it is the war on poverty, drugs, terrorism ... or the current Hitler of the day, an appeal to patriotism is used to convince the people that a little sacrifice of liberty, here or there, is a small price to pay ... The results, though, are frightening and will soon become even more so. ~ Ron Paul

My great objective as a parliamentarian was to dramatise the deficiencies and devise practical government programs to deal with them. It was a cause that went to the heart of our way of life. ~ Gough Whitlam

Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular. ~ Jill Lepore

We do participate in the government programs, like probably 95 percent of farmers do. People who aren't familiar with the agriculture industry, you know, try and make that look like something exceptional. ~ Vicky Hartzler

You know something is wrong when the government declares opening someone else's mail is a felony but your internet activity is fair game for data collecting. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

We need to make sure our government programs encourage work, not dependence. ~ Marco Rubio

If you don't like the idea that most of the money spent on lottery tickets supports government programs, you should know that most of the earnings from mutual funds support investment advisors' and mutual fund managers' retirement. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. ~ Sarah Palin

When John Kennedy attempted to take the government back from the back from the robber barons, he was brutally murdered. The message to future US president and leaders across the world was clear: do as you're told, or die. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the last true president of the United States. And until the globalists are removed from power, we will never have another real one. ~ Alex Jones

The government has a monopoly on the supply of marijuana that you can use in FDA-approved research. So even though there are 20 states and the District of Columbia [that have legalized medical marijuana], and there's marijuana everywhere, we've spent seven years trying to get 10 grams of marijuana for vaporizer research. We're the only people in America that can't get 10 grams of marijuana. ~ Rick Doblin

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

Here in Israel, we want the boys back home, we demand it from our government, who often pay a steep price to get hostages back. But we need a happy ending. We don't want to deal with those days after release, their post-trauma or reintroduction to society. Yet coming home is only the start of their journey. ~ Gideon Raff

Obamacare is not about improved health care or cheaper insurance or better treatment or insuring the uninsured, and it never has been about that. It's about statism. It's about expanding the government. It's about control over the population. It is about everything but health care. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Keep a government poor and weak and it's your servant; let it get rich and powerful and it's your master. ~ H. Beam Piper

After the horrific attacks of September 11th, it was evident that our Government needed to be transformed to meet the new challenges of this dangerous world. ~ Jim Ryun

No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of partiotism. ~ Andrew Jackson

I do want to make something clear: SpaceX does have a lot of government business, but we execute in a commercial fashion. ~ Gwynne Shotwell

Even if every major government were to slap huge taxes on carbon fuels - which is not going to happen - it wouldn't do much to halt climate change any time soon. What it would do is cost us hundreds of billions - if not trillions - of dollars, because alternative energy technologies are not yet ready to take up the slack. ~ Bjorn Lomborg

When a drug comes in from Canada, I wanna make sure it cures ya, not kill ya ... I've got an obligation to make sure our government does everything we can to protect you. And one - my worry is that it looks like it's from Canada, and it might be from a third world. ~ George W. Bush

The New Deal is inconsistent with the principles of limited government and with the constitutional provisions designed to secure that end. ~ Richard Allen Epstein

It was not as if the rest of the nation was suffering from want. .. Americans were experiencing a war-related economic boom. these same citizens might be enjoying an unusual level of prosperity, but they were not aboutto share it with their struggling national government and their even more beleaguered army. Without an ability to raise its own taxes, the Continental Congress had been printing its own money to pay for the war. But after five years of churning out bills that had become almost worthless, Congress was left with few options. By the spring of 1780 every thing was beginning to grind to a terrible and tragic halt. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Before this learning experience, I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty, the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons, and liberals who supported them. ~ Barney Frank

People seem to think that if a man is a Member of Parliament he may do what he pleases. ... Being in Parliament used to be something when I was young, but it won't make a make a gentleman now-a-days. It seems to me that none but brewers, and tallow-chandlers, and lawyers go into Parliament now. ~ Anthony Trollope

as of April 1, 2010, the U.S. government had lost thirty-four out of forty-six habeas cases. In appeals of several of those cases, ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can. ~ Arthur Koestler

Can you think of a single area of government in which George Bush hasn't already made things worse than Bill Clinton did? ~ Harry Browne

It is federal, because it is the government of States united in a political union, in contradistinction to a government of individuals, that is, by what is usually called, a social compact. To express it more concisely, it is federal and not national because it is the government of a community of States, and not the government of a single State or Nation. ~ John C. Calhoun

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works ~ Barack Obama

With the discovery of vast new North American energy resources - thanks to the application of proven technologies like hydraulic fracturing and commonsense regulatory processes on non-federal lands - the U.S. government should no longer be in the business of spending taxpayer dollars on risky, exotic energy projects. ~ Fred Upton

All public interest' legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down ultimately to the grant of an undefined undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary power to some government officials. The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity, cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle. ~ Ayn Rand

Recent school shootings have lured ill-informed Americans into a war on our Second Amendment guarantees, led by the nation's tyrants and their useful idiots ... The Second Amendment was given to us as protection against tyranny by the federal government and the Congress of the United States. ~ Walter E. Williams

Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is so prodigal of it's favors to those called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it could not subsist? But after the public has reaped all the advantage of their service, and they come to be oppressed with age, sickness, and want, all their labours and the good they have done is forgotten, and all the recompense given them is that they are left to die in great misery. ~ Thomas More

The five different areas in which boys are in crisis - education; jobs; emotional health; physical health; and fatherlessness - are handled by different portions of the government. ~ Warren Farrell

When the history of the 20th century is finally written, one of its key features will be the wanton slaughter of more than 170 million people, not in war, but by their own government. The governments that led in this slaughter are the former USSR (65 million) and the Peoples Republic of China (35-40 million). The point to remember is that these governments were the idols of America's leftists. Part of the reason for these and other tyrannical successes was because the people were first disarmed. ~ Walter E. Williams

When you first go on duty at CIA headquarters, you raise your hand and swear an oath - not to government, not to the agency, not to secrecy. You swear an oath to the Constitution. So there's this friction, this emerging contest between the obligations and values that the government asks you to uphold, and the actual activities that you're asked to participate in. ~ Jeremy Scahill

The National Security Council's real role is to coordinate the various activities of the government of the United States in the furtherance of American foreign policy. ~ Oliver North

Some kinds of government regulation of private consensual homosexual behavior may face substantial constitutional challenge. ~ Anthony Kennedy

European languages and a Google app can now turn your words into a foreign language, either in text form or as an electronic voice. Skype, an internet-telephony service, said recently that it would offer much the same (in English and Spanish only). But claims that such technological marvels will spell the end of old-fashioned translation businesses are premature. Software can give the gist of a foreign tongue, but for business use (if executives are sensible), rough is not enough. And polyglot programs are a pinprick in a vast industry. The business of translation, interpreting and software localisation (revising websites, apps and the like for use in a foreign language) generates revenues of $37 billion a year, reckons Common Sense Advisory (CSA), a consulting firm. ~ Anonymous

If you like big government, move to Massachusetts. ~ Joe Miller

In the Netherlands, the government health plan provides for a specially trained nurse/lactation expert to help each new baby's parents in their home for a full ten days following each birth (with a small co-payment). Hired for three, five, or eight hours according to individual families' needs, this maternity nurse serves the new parents breakfast in bed, feeds any older children their breakfast, walks the dog, helps the new mother with breastfeeding if necessary, cleans the house, and notifies the midwife if the mother or baby should need medical attention for any reason. The Dutch consider the care provided each family by the maternity nurse to be an investment in good health, which benefits the entire society because it so effectively reduces the number of illnesses mothers and babies experience during the first year of the baby's life and thus saves money ~ Ina May Gaskin