George Pataki Quotes

I often quote Ronald Reagan, who is pretty close to my favorite President ever, I will have to say that, but one of my favorite remarks he ever made was that when you look at Federal programs, there is nothing so close to eternal life on Earth as a Federal Government program.

I don't think anybody should be expanding Medicaid. I think it's a mistake to create new and more expensive entitlement programs when we can't afford the ones we've got today. We've got to stop this culture of government dependence.

I believe in infrastructure, I believe in investing in your hard assets. Where I think government starts to fail is when it starts getting itself weighed down with the social programs. And I think the American public just feels like a lot of that money is tossed aside and wasted.

There is no question that we are in a period in which we are going to have to use those sources to fund about 35 million dollars a year that used to be paid for by the federal government.

I think the Republican budget priorities are messed up. I salute for the way they're attacking some of the entitlement programs, but they are taking huge cuts, by pretending they're just block-granting it to the states, out of Medicaid, from the least fortunate.

I think we will begin to see some real efforts made to do things like protecting Social Security and Medicare.

I think it's important that people know what raising the debt ceiling is. It's Congress giving permission to the federal government to borrow more money that we don't have, and we borrow it for the purpose of spending it.

Typically, discussions of the safety net boil down to one side wanting to spend more in the name of compassion, and the other side wanting to spend less in the name of fiscal restraint. In both cases, money serves as a proxy for moral responsibility.

The government has become a mechanism for distributing largess, and your census form is your ticket.

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

Social Security has not contributed to the deficit problem.

People still seem to think that they should vote themselves money. They seem to think there is stuff which they think is the government's job, when it's really the individual's job.

Social Security's not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you've got to put all of it on the table.

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

The economy grows when families can spend money on personal priorities rather than priorities imposed by the federal government.

No major entitlement, once it has been implemented, has ever been unwound.

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.

There are lots of people depending on the government who are good, honest citizens who have worked all their lives.

We simply can't keep providing money from the federal government in the form of subsidized or actual loans and Pell Grants when we don't have the money.

You measure a government by how few people need help.

When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.

Well, the problem of the federal government is that they print money and go in debt. That's their national policy, Democrats and Republicans it doesn't matter. And this is where I differ.

We should stop having a conversation about cutting Social Security a little bit or a lot.

Fiscal prudence does not prevent government from providing shelter for the homeless, work for the idle, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute.

We have a dangerous tendency. Roughly half the people in the country pay little of no taxes. These people who are disproportionate beneficiaries of government programs are in favor of more government programs.