Conan O'Brien Quotes

I believe Nebraskans appreciate the fiscal discipline I've brought to state government, balancing the budget without raising taxes and prioritizing education funding.

States, virtually all of them, have a constitutional requirement to operate on a balanced budget.

You allow me to license and regulate marijuana, and I'll fill every hotel and motel room in the state of Kentucky.

Government does not have basic business sense.

The state treasurer has authority to weigh in and take leadership roles on taxing and spending legislation.

There's a lot of money in selling marijuana. If you can do it legally, that's good. Why should all the criminals make the money? This is what people are thinking. If it's happening, if it's going to be legal, let's tax it and regulate it, like we do with everything else and make some money off this. I think that's one reason why people are talking this a little more seriously.

We will never get anywhere with our finances till we pass a law saying...every time we appropriate something, we...pass another bill...stating where the money is coming from.

We borrowed money to fight the Revolutionary War, and so there was a debt owed. We paid it. If we have done that for 235 years, if we have done it ever since this country has existed, we can do it again.

Provision of facilities to the masses is linked with the collection of taxes.

It's no accident that Montana is the most fiscally prudent state in the nation.

I think it is really important when we're talking about fiscal responsibility that we are balancing the budget in ways that really benefit the working people and Americans.

Setting the state budget is one of the most important tasks we undertake at the state Capitol - because after all, it's the people's money - not the government's.

What's really important to me is that we have fiscally responsible balanced budgets.

I'm very conscious that I have to, as Premier of this state, make sure we spend taxpayers' money wisely.

If you took every single penny that Warren Buffett has, it'd pay for 4-1/2 days of the US government. This tax-the-rich won't work. The problem here is the government is way bigger than even the capacity of the rich to sustain it. The Buffett Rule would raise $3.2 billion a year, and take 514 years just to pay off Obama's 2011 budget deficit.

A house panel in Texas has approved full marijuana legalization for the state. Yeah, meaning Texas could go from having dude ranches to 'Dude, ranches.'

I balanced the budget for four straight years, paid off $405 billion in debt - pretty conservative. The first entitlement reform of your lifetime - in fact, the only major entitlement reform now is welfare.

By making marijuana illegal, the agricultural people can't grab hold of it like they did with corn and wheat. So those companies are scrambling around trying to get hold of it, but they can't, because it's a cottage industry, and it will always be a cottage industry. Because the minute the big companies try to make it their own, like they did with soybeans...like Monsanto, they put their own patent on seeds, and you can't do that with marijuana.

Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem. […] Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it. […] The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

Even somebody like Bill Clinton, who I happen to admire very much, the second he was out of office, I remember, he was interview in Rolling Stone and he said he thought we should have legalized marijuana. And I thought, gosh, if only you were in some sort of position to affect change in the last eight years where you could have done something about that.

The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.

Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did... In contrast, legalizing and taxing marijuana would bring in substantial sums that could be used to pay for schools, libraries or early childhood education.

No honest hardworking official likes to see good money disappearing into the hands of the Treasury at the end of the financial year.

Earlier this week - this is crazy - the country's first marijuana cafe opened up, which not only sells medical marijuana, but also has a restaurant where customers can eat. In a related story, the recession is over.

As with most things governmental, failure does not mean having to try something else. It means spending more money.