Mitt Romney Quotes

The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.

We have to deal with the nation's debt.

I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].

It took the first 204 years of our Nation's history to accumulate $1 trillion in debt. And now we are doing that every 2 or 3 years.

Look, I don't dispute that the deficit has increased.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

Well, I think what we need to remember is that budget deficits can impede economic activity.

I know that my Republican colleagues are as ashamed as I am that the United States is forced to borrow over $1 trillion from foreign nations to pay for our national priorities like reconstruction of the gulf coast and the war in Iraq.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Have you noticed the debt is exploding? And it's not all because of Medicare.

But if they want to really think about the fiscal future of this country, then think about how we have moved from hundreds of billions of surpluses to hundreds of billions of deficits.

For the first time in history, we declared war without financing it. Americans have not been asked to pay for it through taxes.

When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.

Defaulting on our [national] debt is defaulting on America.

American economic history does not support the idea that a strong economy depends on chronic federal borrowing.

When President Bush left office, the deficit was approximately $500 billion. It is now approximately now $1.5 trillion. In other words, President Obama has essentially tripled the deficit.

Yes, we can pay the interest on the debt. We can renew the $500 billion worth of bonds that are coming due. We can mail out our Social Security checks. We can make sure those Medicare claims are honored. We can pay our military. We can protect our veterans. But when you get beyond that, the soup gets a little thin.

Deficit, deficit, deficit. The political and media elites are obsessed with the D-word.

It took the national debt two hundred years to reach $1 trillion. Supply Side Economics quadrupled the national debt to over $4 trillion in twelve years (1980-1992) under the Republicans. Bill Clinton actually paid down the national debt. How did he do it? He raised taxes. It produced the longest sustained economic expansion in U.S. History.

When George Bush came into office, we had surpluses. And now we have half-a-trillion-dollar deficit annually. When George Bush came into office, our national debt was around $5 trillion. It's now over $10 trillion. We've almost doubled it.

I think the recovery hasn't been stronger because the hole that was dug for President Obama by the Bush administration was far worse than anybody could imagine, first of all.

The Obama administration's large and sustained increases in debt raise the specter of another financial crisis and large future tax increases, further chilling business investment and job creation.

We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.

The debt they ran up in the first year of the Obama administration is bigger than the last four years of the Bush combined.

The outlook for the Federal budget is bleak.