Pete Gallego Quotes

Look, I am not worried about Washington cutting too much spending too fast. I mean, the kinds of spending cuts we're talking about just right now are $100 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget.

Sequestration is leverage that should not be given up easily.

Sequestration was not designed to be anyone's ideal method for getting our hands around government spending, and it certainly isn't mine.

I was able to promote a strong defense budget when it could have been cut a lot more severely.

Monetary discipline forces fiscal discipline on the politicians as well.

You will see the President being very, very tough on spending.

The President has a short time to let people know that he is serious about getting spending under control.

We give lip service to the importance of deficit reduction, but Americans oppose every single thing that you might do to reduce the deficit.

I think it's essential that we do more than talk about austerity measures and cutting.

But I think the global economy will understand that the United States has the ability to meet its obligations. But it's not going to be able to do it over the long term if we can't control the growth of government.

You know, even people who talk about cutting spending and they go 'That's not the spending that I was actually talking about that you're supposed to be cutting.' Well, we have to be looking across the board.

The budget enforcement rules of the 1990s were an important part of getting the budget back into balance. It was done on a bipartisan basis. Those pay-as-you-go rules were tested and they worked. We are now in a one-party system, and we have thrown them out.

We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy. The left wants to focus on the deficit so they can take us away from the focus on spending as a percentage of the economy.

We are worried about the size of the deficit, which is why the president is pleased that the House and Senate have followed his lead in cutting the deficit in half over the next five years.

The American people reject the idea of giving Washington a blank check to increase the debt limit.

Of course we have to address the deficit if we win.

Higher taxes is the road to ruin. We must and we will shrink our government, and that means making some tough choices, tightening our belts.

Past experience with fiscal austerity at home and overseas strongly suggests that it is best for the economy's long-run performance to restrain government spending rather than raise taxes.

The American people know that we cannot spend our way to prosperity.

Defense spending as a share of the economy dropped significantly during the early 1990s, and that was one of the things, along with other policy changes, that put us back on the path to a balanced budget.

Cutting budget deficits can never be just an exercise in economics.

I'd be a lot more excited about eliminating earmarks if we reduced all of the spending by whatever the earmarks used to be, but nobody's, apparently, going to talk about doing that.

I came to Congress to help reduce spending.

Bush has never sent over a balanced budget.

The only way you can raise the debt ceiling is to change the trajectory of spending - that's my personal preference. But I want the Ways and Means Committee to offer up a solution.