Thomas Jefferson Quotes

On the Sandy bill, I did the best I could on waste, fraud and abuse, and then when the final bill comes, you don't say, 'Hell, no' because you didn't get everything you want in there.

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of public moneys.

It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.

I object to you using words like squander and pork. What is pork in one part of the country is an essential project in another part.

It is the duty of those serving the people in public place to closely limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the Government economically administered.

There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government building—unless it's a temporary tax.

There are no checks and balances if the government is wrong, if a private entrepreneur makes a mistake, he goes bankrupt, the losses are cut, if he bets wrong, he loses, if the government bets wrong, they just get bigger, they just appropriate more money, it's a bottomless pit, because they either get it from the tax payers or run it off a printing press.

We don’t care what the cost-benefit is. We’re going to build it somehow because Congress says it’s going to be built.

The Pentagon says that they are too big to be audited. That’s an insult. They spend $700 billion a year. They need to be audited.

I'm gonna watch the taxpayers' money like I was elected to do.

There's no federal government agency that ought to be immune from having to explain the potential financial impact of an action they've taken or intend to take. We deserve the specifics.

Do we really want to invest $50 billion of hard earned taxpayers money in what is essentially a video entertainment system?

I have found in my years of working in the government than when I face a choice of explanations of venality or incompetence in explaining some government activities, it is almost always incompetence that explains it. It often appears to be venality because we do not realize how incompetent government and large private organizations can be sometimes.

Right after 9/11, the spigot got turned on and a fire hose of money poured out. Much of it was badly monitored and much of it was for stuff that just didn't work.

Secretary Clinton, right from day one, wants to do real investment in public works and infrastructure, building highways and bridges, building airports, to doing what we need to do that way which lifts the economy up, undoubtedly.

And I can tell you that history will back up what I'm about to say and that is that there is no government run by conservatives, Republicans, put whoever you want there, if you give government the opportunity to spend more money than it has, it will do it. It will do it every time.

As a government watchdog, I'm always looking for ways to make government smaller, more efficient, and fairer.

Taxpayers across the U.S. have invested hundreds of billions of dollars building our nation's infrastructure, and that investment should be protected.

What I think is wrong is spending £9m of taxpayers' money on one particular piece of one-sided propaganda.

Infrastructure done right can help working people; infrastructure done wrong is just more money for private equity.

Leading the boom of 1838 were state governments, who, finding themselves with the unexpected windfall of a distributed surplus from the federal government, proceeded to spend the money wildly and borrow even more extravagantly on public works and other uneconomic forms of 'investment.'

I have never been reimbursed at the federal level. Never want to be in a million years. To me, it's just not worth the red flag.

Many programs are built on the government's spending power, and the existence of an extraconstitutional limit on that power is a worrisome development.

Since his election, President Trump has made clear that he and his administration will be focusing on ensuring that the government is a smart buyer, getting the most for the taxpayer's dollar.

In many cases, here we are, putting out reports that we're spending $100 million a year on, and we're telling the public, 'Oh, you don't have access to them.'