Kay Coles James Quotes

I've seen it with my own eyes: When government takes money from the poor and the middle class, everyone suffers.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bribing rich people to help poor people, rather than helping poor people directly, is a popular approach because the cost of tax breaks doesn't show up on the government books.

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.

If you can take my tax money and assure me that it'll go to the right purpose, that it will help the poor, then fine. But I'm not sure a lot of it does. In fact, I know a lot of it doesn't.

The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

The state of our state is fragile …. Our revenue system is broken because it has relied on regressive and unstable taxes …. I refuse to balance this budget on the backs of the children, the elderly, and the poor.

The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them.

Remember that government doesn't earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else.

I mean, the Obama position has been, 'We think government ought to be spending this money, not the people who earn it.'

Every time we spend a federal dollar, what we're doing is we're pulling money out of somebody's pocket, and we're giving it to somebody else.

A corporation's primary goal is to make money. Government's primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.

I heard someone in opposition to reform last night criticize the president for saying it's their money. They said it's not their money; it's my mother's money. Well that's what's wrong with the system.

A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

What the government gives it must first take away.

Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks.

Any government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

Government can’t deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch.

Politicians don't like to target benefits to poor people, because poor people don't contribute to their campaigns.

A mature welfare state is always broke.

Taxes are what pays for a civilized society.

The country needs a gas tax.... That's good for the country.... What's good for the country is good for Chrysler.

Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their votes of other people's money, have every motive to be lavish and none to economize.

Lotteries are a tax on the poor.