Kenneth Langone Quotes

Dependency is death to initiative, to risk-taking and opportunity. It's time to stop the spread of government dependency and fight it like the poison it is.

Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them — take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.

Social Security is not broke, and Social Security does not need to be privatized.

What Clinton severed with his welfare reform was the obligation of the federal government to step in when the states failed and to monitor these programs.

Medicaid is essentially bankrupt, Medicare is essentially bankrupt, why the heck would we give the federal government another entitlement program to manage?

Social Security has never failed to pay promised benefits, and Democrats will fight to make sure that Republicans do not turn a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble.

When we stand up for America, we stand up for what America stands for, which is a safety net for our seniors and really helping our families be able to help themselves.

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

Too many Mainers are dependent on government handouts. Government dependency has not - and never will - create prosperity.

The main purpose of Social Security is to redistribute wealth, to make an increasingly large number of Americans dependent on government for their basic needs in their retirement years.

The total station economy is about $800 million dollars a year, and about $90 million comes from the government. In the long run, we would be better off without federal funding.

People like getting what they think is free stuff from government.

You can't have a situation in which companies proceed on a permanent basis relying only on cash from the government.

I think we need to make sure that we are putting Social Security on a sustainable path. It's absolutely something that the federal government is going to be involved in, in the future.

I never felt hard done by and never wanted for anything, but I grew up in a wealthy area where I saw people being handed things on a plate. So it made me want to earn some money and be able to buy things for myself.

You know, Floridians, we've paid into Social Security. Like a lot of other government programs, we sent money to D.C. We expect to get that money back. We expect that our Social Security is real. So, we have to fix Social Security.

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

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

I'm gonna keep Social Security without change, except I'm going to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse; same thing with Medicare.

Poor people cannot rely on the government to come to help you in times of need. You have to get your education. Then nobody can control your destiny.

I was once a welfare recipient and am very aware of the successes and failures of this critical safety net. There are those that would have us believe that those receiving TANF benefits are lazy, shiftless, freeloaders who are just sitting around thinking of another way to suckle from the government teat.

I knew that good people who wanted to be a part of the American dream have become trapped in dependency because the federal government and the state government had made it in their economic interest not to take a job because the benefits that they didn't work were better. I changed that.

Social Security is a program that should be strengthened and preserved for future generations.

Welfare is hated by those who administer it, mistrusted by those who pay for it and held in contempt by those who receive it.

Social Security is a cruel hoax … unjust, unworkable … and wastefully financed.