Dan Lipinski Quotes

Strong advocacy for education, health care and worker safety will be indispensable if they are to get their fair share of President Bush's austere budget for the next fiscal year.

A budget is a moral document of a nation’s priorities.

I agree with the idea of cutting [budget], but it should all be coming out of entitlements for the affluent and not out of domestic discretionary, which is welfare, education, all the stuff the government does, parks, FBI, and it shouldn't be coming out of Medicaid.

Domestic discretionary spending on education and health care and the environment has been growing at 2 to 3 percent a year. He says we have to rein it in, but he ignores the spending category that is the big spike in the budget.

What we mean by an outcome will naturally depend on the context. Thus, for a government charged with delivering public goods, an outcome will consist of the quantities provided of such goods as intercity highways, national defense and security, environmental protection, and public education together with the arrangements by which they are financed.

The government has a right - the government and the people of the United States have a right to run the programs of the United States. Health, welfare, housing - all these things.

I could never allow [tax] cuts that devastate education for our children, that pollute our environment, that end the guarantee of health care for those who are served under Medicaid, that end our duty or violate our duty to our parents through Medicare. I just couldn't do that. As long as I'm president, I'll never let it happen.

The sequestration is a bad idea, all around. It is something that is out of the question. If you have spending cuts, education of our children, other investments, on the National Institutes of Health, where you are hindering growth, you're no going to reduce the deficit.

Of course, there's been a real debate about where to invest and where to cut, and I'm committed to working with members of both parties to cut our deficits and debt. But we can't simply cut our way to prosperity.

The largest portion of our state budget is Health and Human Services. It will grow by approximately $500 million. A half a billion dollars is a very big number.

We need to have more taxes, not less, and we need the taxes we have, certainly, to provide services - for defense and education and health care. We should not cut money here in order to cut taxes.

Governors of both political parties face a stark choice between unpopular tax increases and drastic cuts in Medicaid, education, public safety and other essential services.

It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber.

You begin to see that all of these things are connected: The kind of cuts that mean less environmental protection are also the kind of cuts that mean less musical education for the schools and that also mean more overcrowded schools.

Once again, we see the Bush administration paying for its failed policies by cutting funds to vital public services and jeopardizing more American jobs.

When people see the budget, they're going to say, 'Oh, my God, I wanted a tax cut, but I didn't know what you were going to do to health care and to Medicare and national defense.'

Real Texans want their kids to have the best education possible, not the one politicians looking to brag about budget cuts have left us with.

Every governor's got tough choices to make.

People were concerned about national security, and that precluded us from having the opportunity to break through on the issues that we cared most about - the economy, education and health care.

You cannot achieve environmental security and human development without addressing the basic issues of health and nutrition.

The federal government should only be providing services for emergencies. You and I, taxpayers, shouldn't be paying for cell phones so someone can have a social life. I just don't think it's appropriate.

I think what both Republicans and Democrats need to do and the leaders on both sides is to recognize that if sequester takes place, it would be disastrous for our national defense and very frankly for a lot of very important domestic programs. They have a responsibility to come together, find the money necessary to de-trigger sequester.

I think in the end the big issue is that the private sector still needs more help. And the answer is not more big government. I know in my state our reforms allowed us to protect firefighters, police officers, and teachers.

Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.

We can't get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can't just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.