Mike Quigley Quotes

The taxpayers deserve accountability.

I firmly believe that the most important feature of spending the people's money is complete transparency.

I am decidedly opposed to the people's money being used to pay the fiddler ... He that dances should always pay the fiddler.

The Pentagon says that they are too big to be audited. That’s an insult. They spend $700 billion a year. They need to be audited.

The last thing you want is a group of senators who just lent you seven and a half billion dollars to sit back and go, 'Look at these jerks and how they're using taxpayer money.'

Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay - that 'someone else' is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money.

We need transparency in government spending. We need to put each government expenditure online so every Floridian can see where their tax money is being spent.

If you want the government off your back, get your hands out of its pockets.

In our recovery package we put new standards of accountability and transparency, which we hope will now apply.

Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.

It is not for the State Department or even the Secretary of State to say when and how the resources of the American people will be spent.

Homeland Security money ought not to be allocated on a pork barrel basis.

If you think that my job is to rob the Federal Treasury on your behalf, you have voted for the wrong man

It is necessary to watch people in Washington all the time to keep them from unnecessary expenditure of money.

The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until someone is asked to pay the bill.

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of public moneys.

Institute a strict audit (of which no one need be ashamed) of the money given by us to the different workmen for the beautification of the City. See that we are receiving money's worth for the money spent. If there is embezzlement anywhere, cause the funds so embezzled to be disgorged. We expect the Romans to help from their own resources in this patriotic work, and certainly not to intercept our contributions for the purpose.

Congress is not an ATM

From now on, the government has to make its accounts public on a quarterly basis.

We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right [individually] to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

I'm gonna watch the taxpayers' money like I was elected to do.

I came to Congress on the promise of cutting wasteful government spending. There are plenty of examples of the government playing loose with taxpayer money, but none more so than how we spend our foreign aid dollars.

The money that government spends is your money, not government's, and you know how to spend it better.

Federal law must be followed where federal dollars are in play.

While security of national leadership is of paramount significance, expenditure on permanent civil structures at the family home of the prime minister and chief minister from public exchequer will be a burden on their conscience.