Melvyn P. Leffler Quotes

Austerity [in the Defense Department] meant that risks had to be managed, not eliminated.

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

If we can't find cuts in the defense budget, we're not looking carefully enough.

As Secretary of Defense my job would be much easier if I didn't have to put up with [budget] cuts.

We can cut the Defense Department budget because we’ve got bombs running out of our ears.

I’m going to keep on working to get rid of the sequester. You get up and do your jobs every day; let’s make sure Washington gets up and does its job. And what makes me frustrated is sometimes the very folks who say they stand with our military proudly are the same ones who are standing in the way of fixing the sequester. It’s important to look at deeds and not words.

If we don’t take defense spending seriously, it undermines our credibility on other spending issues

How do you balance the budget, cut taxes and increase defense spending at the same time? It's very simple. You do it with mirrors.

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.

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

I've made more cuts than any governor has ever made.

We cannot cut our way to prosperity.

The Pentagon has a long tradition of dialing up the threat to get more dollars at budget time.

The only way to make budget cuts is to bring down force structure.

[The] up-and-down pattern of [defense] spending over the last 18 years averages out to below zero percent real growth. In other words, if defense spending had followed a path of zero percent real growth, the U.S. probably could have obtained more defense for its dollar.

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

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.

When they talk about belt-tightening in Washington, they are talking about tightening our belts.

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

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

Show me your budget and I’ll describe your strategy.

Because the resources available to the U. S. military will be increasingly limited, the objectives must be too.

I’m a hawk, but I’m a cheap hawk. I want to cut the Defense budget by 20 percent.

Foreign policy debates are frequently segregated from domestic policy ones, so commentators who propose increasing the defense budget or sending more foreign aid are seldom asked to explain which domestic programs they’d cut or which taxes they’d raise, in order to find the money.

When we're told, "You have to find $750 billion to cut", and we say "OK, we can do that; ....the Congress shouldn't turn around and say, "Not in my district" or "Not my weapons system".