Richard N. Haass Quotes

There are two important things to remember about 'entitlements': They are hugely popular programs for a very good reason, and actual sensible 'reform' would mean improving them, not sacrificing them at the altar of 'fiscal responsibility.'

No major entitlement, once it has been implemented, has ever been unwound.

Too often in Washington, we only look at the recipient side: How does the budget affect either those who receive or don't receive benefits.

When you talk about Social Security, it's not just enough to say, we're looking at you, this really matters. It's the fact that a million Americans think it matters. Oh, wait, it's 2 million Americans think it matters. No, it's 4 million Americans. It's 6 million, wait, it's 10 million, it's 50 million Americans who care about this. That's how we're going to make change.

The true enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who defend an imploding status quo.

From the Medicare prescription drug plan to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of No Child Left Behind, President Bush presided over a major expansion of the reach of government.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

Journalists have to be optimists. When you interview somebody on Social Security reform, you have got to believe that Social Security can be reformed.

A mature welfare state is always broke.

To deal with entitlements we must either raise taxes, cut benefits, or borrow inordinate amounts of money.

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.

People like entitlements. That's why we spend so much on them.

We should be reforming our entitlement programs to empower people.

They're all tied together: taxes, Medicare, Social Security, and the debt. We've got to have a setting of priorities, and looking at it - at each of them as disconnected, I think, doesn't properly address these major challenges.

I don't believe there's a red state in America where people believe you should cut Medicare, Social Security and veterans' benefits rather than doing away with corporate tax loopholes.

You've got the Democratic Party that now depends on more government spending and actual building the dependence on government in order to increase their political party.

The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing.

You cannot tackle Britain's debts without tackling the unreformed welfare system.

I don't think you expand entitlements when so many people are dependent on government and when the money the federal government is offering is going to be taken away from you after just a couple of years.

No one was elected to Congress because he or she promised to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

America should meet its obligations in the form of Social Security, Medicare, our ability to pay our military, legally binding legislation that allows unemployment compensation, the judiciary, the federal court system, the federal prison system, all those kinds of things have to be paid for.

Social Security has not contributed to the deficit problem.

In the current law we're seeing Social Security dwindle. And so what we're saying is if we're going to reduce taxes we just want to make sure that there are things within the law that pay for it.

Entitlements seem to grow with prosperity; not only because they are indexed to inflation or GDP, but also because a prosperous country tells itself it can afford more benefits.

Social Security's not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you've got to put all of it on the table.