Byron Dorgan Quotes

Those who say we can continue to indefinitely borrow from our children and grandchildren and generations to come in fact are eroding our ability to do what we ought to do in education, in health care and in other things.

Now we are raising the debt limit 3 times, up to $8 trillion, so that our children and our grandchildren will have to pay for the cost of our expenditures.

Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

I am not disputing the need for this money. What I am disputing and calling attention to is the fact that we are taking the tab for defense in our time against terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere and shoving this tab off onto our children.

What we are effectively doing, I say this to the young people of America whom my colleagues represent, is leaving our children and grandchildren the tab for fighting a war, letting them pay for the lion's share of it by simply adding it to the national debt.

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

I urge the Congress to avoid running up large costs for future generations of Americans.

The easiest thing that is done, unfortunately, in Washington is to spend money today and send the bill to our children and grandchildren.

By taking out a loan, I am committing myself to years of interest repayments, and therefore to years of wage slavery. And the UK has been borrowing like crazy since 1694, when the Bank of England was invented. This means that we are locked into high taxation to pay for 300 years of wars and other costly and generally disastrous state enterprises.

During the fiscal year ending in 1861, expenses of the federal government had been $67 million. After the first year of armed conflict they were $475 million and, by 1865, had risen to one billion, three-hundred million dollars. On the income side of the ledger, taxes covered only about eleven per cent of that figure. By the end of the war, the deficit had risen to $2.61 billion. That money had to come from somewhere.

I'm outraged that we're building roads, schools, and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that we're doing it with borrowed money from China that we're paying interest on. I'm outraged.

We have mountain of debt that isn't going away and all the problems are here to stay, and anybody who tells you that is a good thing ought to get out of the business of helping the government down the road.

These kids understood what is not immediately obvious; that they were going to pay the bills for tax cuts that had been passed today or in the last 4 years, and for the war in Iraq, because essentially we are borrowing money to do those things.

John F. Kennedy asked us what we could do for America. This Democratic Party asks what can government give you. Don't worry about paying the bill, it's on your kids and grandkids.

You know, we have a fiscal train wreck before us. And unless we act, and act deliberately, we're not going to enable our kids to have what we have. It's plain and simple as that.

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.

I'll let Democrats defend spending our grandchildren broke on entitlements.

The common People have been pleased with large Emissions of Bills [printing of money]: And as for a Plenty of this Paper Currency, they loved to have it so, not considering what they should do in the End thereof. The People have chosen rather to lay up Debts for their Children in these promissory Bills, than to pay their Debts themselves. Nay, Is it not to be feared that many have been wishing for Plenty of these Bills with this View, that they might depreciate, that so they might the more easily pay their Debts.

A nation is not in danger of financial disaster merely because it owes itself money.

As a general rule, the demands of the current year, especially in time of peace, should be provided for by the revenues of that year.

Let us act with our eyes open. We are going to have a deficit next fiscal year and the year after that.

We must get rid of deficit spending which finances the political schemes of today by mortgaging the future of tomorrow.

The debt ceiling serves no useful purpose.

Only a small part of the direct costs of the war [WWI] were paid by taxation; the greater part were financed by government borrowings which spread the burden of payment over into the future.

Both parties recognize the fundamental danger the country's debt poses to our nation's future, but President Obama's policies have not reflected that reality. By the end of his first term, his administration will have nearly doubled our public debt.