Bill Haslam Quotes

Can the amazing national debt be paid by a little trifling sum squeezed from year to year out of America?.... Would it not be much superior wisdom, and sounder policy, for a distressed kingdom to retrench the vast unnecessary expenses continually incurred by its enormous vices?

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.

Of course we have to address the deficit if we win.

Defense spending as a share of the economy dropped significantly during the early 1990s, and that was one of the things, along with other policy changes, that put us back on the path to a balanced budget.

I came to Congress to help reduce spending.

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.

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

To cut the federal budget without cutting entitlements is like giving up chocolate-chip cookies and then deciding it's OK to eat the ones that don't have any nuts.

Look, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.

Washington doesn't have just a spending problem, or just an entitlement problem, or just a taxing problem. We have a leadership problem. Fix that, and the first three problems are solved.

When Mr. Obama entered office, he said all the right things about getting Washington spending under control. He even promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Obviously, that didn't happen.

Monetary discipline forces fiscal discipline on the politicians as well.

There is a difficult leap between talking about balancing the budget and actually doing it.

Instead of raising taxes as some would insist, we need to reduce waste and inefficiency in government.

We have a spending problem, not a taxing problem. The less we spend, the more jobs we have the potential to create.

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

We give lip service to the importance of deficit reduction, but Americans oppose every single thing that you might do to reduce the deficit.

The first order of business is the elimination of the annual deficit.

Look at what happened in the 1990s: when they balanced the federal budget, it was through growth in the economy and controlling spending.

There are only two honest ways to reduce our debt: cut spending or raise revenues.

I believe very firmly that we can get to balanced budgets without raising taxes and without cutting transfers to the provinces or to individuals.

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

In addition to reining in spending, taxes, tolls and fees, let's rein in how much the state borrows.

When I was speaker in North Carolina, the state was gripped with a deficit, and we made a fundamental policy decision to adopt austerity budgets for four years.

I think the government lost control over fiscal policy in UPA-2. But it is possible to suggest that the momentum of the populism of UPA-1 did the damage when the economy slowed down, but government spending could not.