Evan Bayh Quotes

To simply argue that public spending must always go up and never be cut is irresponsible.

At a time of tight budgets, unless something is really broken and not working, they [his congressional colleagues] just don't get excited about it.

We all have to sacrifice to reduce the debt, but we can’t sacrifice our future.

The revenue you take in should be enough to cover the revenue that you spend and go beyond that to get a reserve. In order to do that we [in California] need cuts and pension reforms, and taxes.

I am a governor who left office with a smaller general fund budget than when we started.

I've been a conservative when it comes to budgeting issues and streamlining government.

We'll set our approach to borrowing, to spending, to taxation, in a sensible way on a sensible timescale.

What I wanted to do was see if we couldn't balance the budget.

Today is the day for the complaining to end and for statesmanship to begin. Today I am taking action to cut state spending and balance the budget this year.

I have a record as governor. I have a record of cutting spending. And I talked yesterday not only about we ought to cut spending, I talked about how we've cut spending in Mississippi and how if you did the same things in the federal government, you would save tens of billions of dollars a year.

My goal was to do the best job I could in governing the state of Wisconsin, in some cases making very tough decisions to have to bring our spending in line with the resources we had at the state level.

Disciplined governments do not engage in the economic equivalent of binge eating followed by crash dieting.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown committed to John Major's spending envelopes in 1997. No-one said that Tony Blair and John Major were identical. This happens quite often that parties actually, despite all the sound and fury, agree on the overall need to make sure that we live within our means as a country.

The most remarkable thing about Calvin Coolidge is that he served for 67 months, and when he left office, the budget was lower than he came in. In real terms - in nominal terms with vanilla on top - he cut the budget year over year.

Instead of raising taxes as some would insist, we need to reduce waste and inefficiency in government.

The President has a short time to let people know that he is serious about getting spending under control.

I personally do not worship at the alter of a balanced budget.

I want the government to pinch pennies for a change instead of American families.

Balancing the budget is like going to Heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there.

Like Ike [President Eisenhower] did. Talk economy and then spend away.

The only way to meet the situation [the financial crisis] is spend less money and to run the City of New York within the limits of our resources. Unless you do this, gentlemen, you will have a difficult problem confronting you by the end of this year and the taxpayers of 1922 and the years thereafter will have to pay the price of our present lack of prudence or our unwillingness to economize at the proper time.

Let us have the courage to stop borrowing to meet continuing deficits. Revenues must cover expenditures by one means or another. Any government, like any family, can, for a year, spend a little more than it earns. But you know and I know that a continuation of the habit means the poor house.

Washington has to stop spending money we don’t have for projects we don’t want.

Fiscal conservatism means balancing budgets — not running deficits that the next generation can't afford. It means improving the efficiency of delivering services by finding innovative ways to do more with less. It means cutting taxes when possible and prudent to do so, raising them overall only when necessary to balance the budget, and only in combination with spending cuts. It means when you run a surplus, you save it; you don't squander it. And most importantly, being a fiscal conservative means preparing for the inevitable economic downturns — and by all indications, we've got one coming.

The function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as I understand it, is to resist all demands for expenditure made by his colleagues and, when he can no longer resist, to limit the concession to the barest point of acceptance.