John C. Danforth Quotes

Back in 2008, candidate Obama called a $10 trillion national debt 'unpatriotic' - serious talk from what looked to be a serious reformer. Yet by his own decisions, President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined. One president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt.

I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn't really need to pay down the debt - outrageous in my view.

[Deficits are] a yawner. We, as Republicans, have talked about deficits and balanced budgets since the days of Roosevelt, and the people simply haven't listened, because they can't relate to those huge numbers.

I think growing an economy is a good way to help with a deficit, but ultimately, it's about fiscal discipline and responsible spending - and smart decisions.

The deficit had become a symbol of our inability to control and manage the cost of government.

If I hear one more Republican tell me about balancing the budget, I am going to strangle them.

Where we are now is we have resolved the revenue issue and the question is what are we going to do about spending. I wish the president would lead us in this discussion rather than putting himself in a position of having to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table to discuss the single biggest issue confronting our future.

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.

When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.

... everything written is at least in part fantasy. Except maybe the national budget. That's horror.

Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic.

We owe more money than any Nation in the World, and we are LOWERING TAXES. When is the time to pay off a debt if it is not when you are doing well? You let a Politician return home from Washington and announce, 'Boys we lowered your taxes. We had to borrow the money to do it, but we did it.' Say, they would elect him for life.

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

Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.

The challenge for any government is how do you do two things at the same time. How do you put money forward for things like the payroll tax holiday, for things like getting a jump-start on infrastructure, for building schools, and make the decisions for long-term deficit reduction.

I must express my protest against continually increasing the debt without taking positive steps to slow its growth.

Democrats have always wanted to grow government with revenues from our society's producers. They aren't sincere about reducing the deficit, because they will not abandon their addiction to spending other people's money.

I worry very much that we're in a situation now where there doesn't appear to be any limitation whatsoever in terms of the spending commitments that Obama's administration wants to make. Vast expansion in terms of the deficit, but it also says a lot about what they intend for the role of government in the society.

I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits. I inherited a trillion-dollar deficit. ... This notion that somehow we caused the deficits is just wrong. It's just not true. ... If they start trying to give you a bunch of facts and figures suggesting that it's true, what they're not telling you is they baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts and a prescription drug plan that they didn't pay for and the wars.

Let's pass a bill to cover the moon with yogurt that will cost $5 trillion today. And then let's pass a bill the next day to cancel that bill. We could save $5 trillion.

Hearing politicians tell us we can't afford a tax cut is like listening to a glutton tell you he can't afford a diet. In no other context do people talk about paying for money they don't have. I can't pay for your refusal to give me money because I need a yacht.

Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy.

I worry that we're seeing a situation- Obama's administration not only committing us the huge deficits for the future, but is also redefining the relationship between government, on the one hand, and the private sector on the other.

I have proposed I would not add a penny to the debt and [Donald Trump] plans would add $5 trillion to the debt.

When this president was sworn into office, he was handed a deficit of over a trillion dollars. Republicans were in control of Congress for much of the time that President George W. Bush was in office, and they didn't do a great job of controlling spending.