Elaine Chao Quotes

As the President reviewed the state of the union and unveiled his second-term agenda, he fell short of adequately explaining how he intends to set America back on the course of fiscal responsibility and secure the fiscal health of the nation.

What we do want to see is reforms that are going to have a permanent effect on the budget deficit.

We agree with Simpson and Bowles and others who have looked at this. What's necessary is to stabilize the debt and then work from there. You can't balance the budget in the short term because to do that would be to ratchet down the economy.

It is vital that we get these policies right as we take forward our plans to drive down the deficit and transform our economy.

Tonight, I come before you to announce that the federal deficit, once so incomprehensibly large that it had eleven zeroes, will be, simply zero.

Let’s make this the year where we are either going to get rid of the deficit or get rid of the idea that we are going to get rid of the deficit..

It certainly would be helpful going forward for deficit reduction efforts to focus on the medium term while not subtracting from the impetus we need to keep a fragile economy moving forward.

I am prepared to discuss the things that I believe we need to do not just to raise the debt limit. Raising the debt limit is the easiest thing. That's one vote away. The hard thing is to show the world we are serious about putting our spending in order so we can show people we'll able to pay our bills down the road.

Look at what happened in the 1990s: when they balanced the federal budget, it was through growth in the economy and controlling spending.

The single greatest force for deficit reduction is a growing economy.

I would submit a balanced budget if elected president, and it would be painful.

You see, in government, people give you a mandate, and you've got to fulfil that. Ours is very clear. Fix our public finances and get our country working.

Not in the constitution, but I would propose a law to the French parliament that provides for reducing the budget deficit year by year, until we have reached a balanced budget by 2017.

A Syriza government will respect Greece's obligation as a eurozone member to maintain a balanced budget and will commit to quantitative targets.

I have three adult children, and I have four grandchildren. I want to stop the deficits. I want to make sure that we're not passing on to my children and my grandchildren deficits and that we cannot repay and that they will have to repay and maybe they won't be able to repay them.

The biggest change we have to tackle that's out there is that we're digging the hole deeper and deeper and spending is totally out of control. And that's something that, quite frankly, is affecting future generations. You're giving a lot of debt to them and you can't keep doing it. It's not helping anybody.

Near-term deficits are temporary and manageable if - and only if - we keep spending in check, the tax burden low and the economy growing.

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.

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

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.

Sound public finances are the essential foundation on which to construct a better-balanced economy from the wreckage of Labour's boom and bust. But it is economic growth that will create the jobs and the prosperity for the future and enable us to pay down Labour's debt.

When Bill Clinton was in town, he sent over a balanced budget.

Every generation has an obligation to leave its children in a better position than it inherited. Our representatives in Washington are breaking faith with that covenant. America must reduce its federal spending and accumulation of debt for the sake of generations to come.

From the Left comes the proposition that, given the slow economy, we should defer attending to the problem of mounting obligations - and the truly delusional idea that growing federal debt doesn't matter because we owe most of it to ourselves.