Mason Cooley Quotes

As American families and businesses have been forced to tighten their belts, Washington has refused to do the same.

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.

You will see the President being very, very tough on spending.

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.

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

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.

I think it's essential that we do more than talk about austerity measures and cutting.

A lawmaker cannot be pro-sequester while also purporting to be pro-national security or supportive of a strong economy.

I think to balance the budget, probably every federal department has to take cuts in my opinion.

You know, even people who talk about cutting spending and they go 'That's not the spending that I was actually talking about that you're supposed to be cutting.' Well, we have to be looking across the board.

It's going to be true that anything that reduces the federal deficit will have somebody unhappy.

In things a moderation keep; Kings ought to shear, not skin, their sheep.

We are worried about the size of the deficit, which is why the president is pleased that the House and Senate have followed his lead in cutting the deficit in half over the next five years.

Should we freeze or postpone prospective tax cuts and avoid any new tax cuts until we are sure we have the money to pay for the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq.

Higher taxes is the road to ruin. We must and we will shrink our government, and that means making some tough choices, tightening our belts.

The American people know that we cannot spend our way to prosperity.

I'd be a lot more excited about eliminating earmarks if we reduced all of the spending by whatever the earmarks used to be, but nobody's, apparently, going to talk about doing that.

Look, I am not worried about Washington cutting too much spending too fast. I mean, the kinds of spending cuts we're talking about just right now are $100 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget.

Bush has never sent over a balanced budget.

Sequestration is leverage that should not be given up easily.

Sequestration was not designed to be anyone's ideal method for getting our hands around government spending, and it certainly isn't mine.

Having said that, I believe we must not compound the natural disaster of Katrina by creating a fiscal disaster in Congress - it is our duty to ensure that we reign in other government spending in any event, and especially in this time of national emergency.

We must take away the government's credit card. With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts.

I was able to promote a strong defense budget when it could have been cut a lot more severely.

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.