50 Budget Quotes

I do not understand a mind which sees a gracious beneficence in spending money to slay and maim human beings in almost unimaginable numbers and deprecates the expenditure of a smaller sum to patch up the ills of mankind.

Remember that government doesn't earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else.

Less than fifteen cents to the province and more than twenty-five cents to Ottawa, this is far from being excessive!

It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber.

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.

It's time to look beyond the budget ax to assure access to health care for all. It's time to look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we can tackle today, and to work together for tomorrow - building a health care system that works for all Americans.

Opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is bad public policy that has no place in the budget process,. The Budget Committee needs to leave drilling in the Arctic Refuge behind and focus on crafting this year's budget package.

You know, the Democrats want to balance the budget by raising spending and raising taxes. The Soviet Union had a balanced budget.

The size of the Federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.

As the original Mary Poppins budget of five million dollars continued to grow, I never saw a sad face around the entire Studio. And this made me nervous. I knew the picture would have to gross 10 million dollars for us to break even. But still there was no negative head-shaking. No prophets of doom. Even Roy was happy. He didn't even ask me to show the unfinished picture to a banker. The horrible thought struck me - suppose the staff had finally conceded that I knew what I was doing.

Whatever expenditure is sanctioned - even when it is sanctioned against the ministry's wish - the ministry must find the money. Accordingly, they have the strongest motive to oppose extra outlay.... The ministry is (so to speak) the breadwinner of the political family, and has to meet the cost of philanthropy and glory; just as the head of a family has to pay for the charities of his wife and the toilette of his daughters.

There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program- your tax-dollar will go further.

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason I am is because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. The question is, 'How do you hold down government spending?' Government spending now amounts to close to 40% of national income not counting indirect spending through regulation and the like. If you include that, you get up to roughly half. The real danger we face is that number will creep up and up and up. The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes.

Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay home and see bad television for nothing.

I won't give you personnel, I won't give you any money. Do what you like but I won't raise this with the government... And in general I am against moon missions.

Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with.

The Postal Service is being wasteful in spending nearly $300,000 to promote its Elvis Presley stamp. To break even, they would have to sell more than one million stamps to collectors who do not then use them.

Balance the stupid fucking budget!

We've tripled the amount of money- I believe it's from $50 million up to $195 million available.

Yet today our military is still organized more for Cold War threats than for the challenges of a new century -- for industrial age operations, rather than for information age battles. There is almost no relationship between our budget priorities and a strategic vision. The last seven years have been wasted in inertia and idle talk. Now we must shape the future with new concepts, new strategies, new resolve.

I wish I could say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had done himself less than justice. Unfortunately, I can only say that I believe he has done himself justice. Some Chancellors are macro-economic. Other Chancellors are fiscal. This one is just plain cheap.

We are not asking for a penny piece of Community money for Britain. What we are asking is for a very large amount of our own money back, over and above what we contribute to the Community, which is covered by our receipts from the Community.

Before war can be fought, a long series of necessary steps, which quite obviously are not and cannot be enforced steps, must be taken by the mass of men. Naval and military budgets must be voted in parliaments and congresses, not just once or twice in a generation but year after year; not secretly, but accompanied by long and public discussion, the budgets being supported by members of parliament, or deputies or congressmen who are still in many states continuously reelected in free and secret franchises, often by great majorities.

Audiences who have been forced to wade through the thick middle-class padding of more expensively made movies to get to the action enjoy the nose-thumbing at 'good taste' of cheap movies that stick to the raw materials. At some basic level they like the pictures to be cheaply done, they enjoy the crudeness; it's a breather, a vacation from proper behavior and good taste and required responses. Patrons of burlesque applaud politely for the graceful erotic dancer but go wild for the lewd lummox who bangs her big hips around. That's what they go to burlesque for.

They call me 'The Pork King,' they don't know how much I enjoy it.

As Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani showed how exercising fiscal discipline, including tax cuts, lowers deficits, spurs economic growth, and increases revenue. It is time the rest of the country benefit from a true fiscal conservative leader who gets real results.

Though on pleasure she was bent, She had a frugal mind.

He was the first Chancellor of the Exchequer who ever made the Budget interesting. 'He talked shop,' it was said, 'like a tenth muse.' He could apply all the resources of a glowing rhetoric to the most prosaic questions of cost and profit; could make beer romantic and sugar serious. He could sweep the widest horizon of the financial future, and yet stoop to bestow the minutest attention on the microcosm of penny stamps and the monetary merits of half-farthings.

I have also reviewed my own financial obligations, which have puffed up recently like a hammered thumb.

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.

I spoke to my dad and he said it took close to 90 dollars to raise me, but that was me and my sister and my sister moved out when she was 16, so sometimes it can knock you up to triple digits to raise a kid.

I hold it the duty of the Executive to insist upon frugality in the expenditures, and a sparing economy is itself a great national resource.

Once upon a time, government budgets were balanced, our money was sound, the streets were safe, and taxes imposed by all levels of government took less than 10% of our income.

I worked for the BBC's rival, ITV, the commercial network. What was great about it was that due to regulatory wrinkles, there was a lot of money that had to be spent on programming.

'No nation would refuse to fight an invading army because some expert argued it would be cheaper to invest in defenses against future invasions. It is not a matter of prioritising lives now over lives tomorrow.'

Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

If we can't or won't define the enemy, the cost to fight such a war will be endless. How many American troops are we prepared to lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we willing to see killed? How many American civilians will we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we prepared to give up? How much prosperity will we sacrifice? [...] I support President Bush and voted for the authority and the money to carry out his responsibility to defend this country, but the degree of death and destruction and chances of escalation must be carefully taken into consideration.

We need to worry about our borders here at home, not worry about the borders around the world, and the border between Syria and Iraq - that doesn't have anything to do with our national security, we have to deal with our own national security. Our military right now is in shambles because we've been stretched too thin. One of these days we're gonna have to wake up, and I'm afraid we won't wake up until we go bankrupt, and we're approaching that time already.

His opposition to what he considers unconstitutional spending even earned the grudging respect of GOP leaders. When Newt Gingrich cracked the whip on party members to support a messy budget compromise, he excused Paul from the duty to support the budget, and the 'Ron Paul exemption' entered the congressional vocabulary. What did it take for other members to earn this privilege to buck the party? A voting record that opposed all unnecessary federal spending, even in their home district. No one else has been granted the exemption.

Their [US] defense budget in absolute figures is almost 25 times bigger than Russia's. This is what in defense is referred to as 'their home - their fortress'. And good for them, I say. Well done!

Mr. Speaker, I once again find myself compelled to vote against the annual budget resolution for a very simple reason: it makes government bigger. [...] We need to understand that the more government spends, the more freedom is lost. Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all. My Republican colleagues especially ought to know this. Unfortunately, however, the GOP has decided to abandon principle and pander to the entitlements crowd. But this approach will backfire, because Democrats will always offer to spend even more than Republicans. When Republicans offer to spend $500 billion on Medicare, Democrats will offer $600 billion. Why not? It's all funny money anyway, and it helps them get reelected. [...] The increases in domestic, foreign, and military spending would not be needed if Congress stopped trying to build an empire abroad and a nanny state at home.

Neil Cavuto: Yeah but, you can't, Congressman, we've got a pretty good economy going here, right? We've got productivity soaring. We've got retail sales that are strong. We've got corporate earnings that for, what, the 19th quarter, are up double digit? We've got a market chasing highs, I mean, this isn't happening in a vacuum, right? Ron Paul: Yeah, that's nice, but when you have to borrow, you know... My personal finances would be very good if I borrowed a million dollars every month. But, someday, the bills will become due. And the bills will come due in this country, and then we'll have to pay for it. We can't afford this war, and we can't afford the entitlement system. Neil Cavuto: Look, Congressman, did you say this 10 years ago, when the numbers were similarly strong... Ron Paul: Go back and check. Neil Cavuto: ...and we were still borrowing a good deal then. Ron Paul: That's right, that means the dollar bubble is much bigger than ever. Neil Cavuto: So what's gonna happen? Ron Paul: We've had the NASDAQ bubble collapse already. We have the housing bubble in the middle of a collapse, so the dollar bubble will collapse as well. We have to live within our means. You can't print money out of the blue, and think you can print your money into prosperity.