Ryan Zinke Quotes

We've got the power of the purse in the Congress.

What you really want to do is sit down and find a place that you can control government spending and raise more revenue.

Congress, of course, is not bound to accept the president's budget figures, but the House has the sole power to appropriate funds for spending, and it is a duty that should not be ignored.

The best legislator is the one who votes for all appropriations and against all taxes.

You may think my business is to make appropriations, but it is not. It is to prevent their being made.

The power of the purse is the only real power of government.

When you're the president of the United States, you have no money unless the Congress says, 'Here's what you can spend it on.'

The problem with our deficit is not because Americans are taxed too little. The problem with the deficit is because Washington spends too much money. We have got to stop spending money we don't have.

The Appropriations Committee in the Senate is out of control, out of control on spending.

We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy. The left wants to focus on the deficit so they can take us away from the focus on spending as a percentage of the economy.

There was no measure that required greater caution or more severe scrutiny than one to impose taxes or raise a loan, be the form what it may. I hold that government has no right to do either, except when the public service makes it imperiously necessary, and then only to the extent that it requires.

The U.S. has a law on the books called the debt limit, but the name is misleading. The debt limit started in 1917 for the purpose of facilitating more national debt, not reducing it. It still serves that purpose. It's unconnected to spending, hurts our credit rating and has been an abject failure at limiting debt.

Federal spending is atrocious.

I generally leave the details of fiscal programs to the Administration and Congress. That's really their area of authority and responsibility, and I don't think it's appropriate for me to second guess.

If you could bring to me a majority of people to say that we're going to have $10 of spending cuts for $1 of revenue enhancement, put me in, coach.

It is a sound principle of finance, and a still sounder principle of government, that those who have the duty of expending the revenue of a country should also be saddled with the responsibility of levying and providing it.

Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more.

Congress have an unlimited power to raise money ... restricted only by the duty to appropriate it to the purpose of common defense and of general, not local; national, not State benefit.

Nations in general, even under governments of the more popular kind, usually commit the administration of their finances to single men or to boards composed of a few individuals, who digest and prepare, in the first instance, the plans of taxation, which are afterwards passed into laws by the authority of the sovereign or legislature.

The delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where the Constitution has placed it—with the immediate representatives of the people.

The debt limit does not affect the deficits or surpluses. The critical revenue and spending decisions are made through the congressional budget process.

Actively search for spending bills that I can veto as a sign of … financial stewardship.

I always think a debt ceiling is a good tool to carry something.

So in the House and Senate, we own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill.

The budget doesn't have much control over the government. Then again, the government doesn't have much control over the budget.