Junichiro Koizumi Quotes

How does a government reduce expenditures? To be absolutely flat about it, 99 per cent of it is accomplished by putting people out of work. Now that is a tough way to say it, but it is a fact.

Beginning to dismantle the Pentagon would save $1 trillion a year - a small government proposal if ever there was one.

It's my father's legacy. My father's view was that the public is the employer of these government employees and has the right to know what they're up to.

Living standards in both the public and private sector have to be brought down. The private sector has to sell more abroad and consume less at home. The government sector has to get closer to just spending what it can collect in taxes.

Incredibly, whenever I have proposed the theory that half of government workers could be cut, current and former federal employees I know have all agreed.

My approach to cutting spending as president, is to do a ten percent across the board cut of all federal agencies, and then ask each of my new agency heads to find another ten percent by drilling down. That's what you do in business to come up with approximately 20 percent cuts for the first fiscal year budget.

As Congress debates overhauling the nation's health care system, it should not authorize a reform plan that would further our financial woes. We must avoid creating an unsustainable government program. There is no question that reform is needed, but health care can be made more affordable without massive and expensive new bureaucracies.

Save the taxpayer's money by canceling the Ares 1 and V.

But I don't want massive layoffs of anyone - public or private. We are planning on shrinking government through attrition and reform, not through random pink slips.

When businesses face tough times, one of the first items they cut is overhead expenses. The government should do the same.

We will downsize the government, motivate excess employees to become entrepreneurs, and increase the pay of a lean and mean bureaucracy.

I have a record as governor. I have a record of cutting spending. And I talked yesterday not only about we ought to cut spending, I talked about how we've cut spending in Mississippi and how if you did the same things in the federal government, you would save tens of billions of dollars a year.

From the very first time I talked to Safeco employees, I said the reality was expenses were too high and the reality is two-thirds of our expenses are people, so the reality is there will be effects on people.

Like working families all across the state, we must find a way to make government live within its means.

The federal government spends millions to run the Postal Service. I could lose your mail for half of that.

We held the team together for as long as possible and then sent all except the most critical personnel home.

We ran three cars last year. Unfortunately, as time went on, we did have to let a few people go, which we regretted, but just because of the situation.

Every government program needs to be more efficient. Instead of pointing out how other programs can tighten their belts, every program administrator must look inward to save money.

As families and small businesses alike are tightening their belts to account for the worsening economy, they have every right to ask: 'Why isn't my government doing the same?'

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 do not intend to dispute in any way the need for defence cuts and the need for government spending cuts in general. I do not share a not in my backyard approach to government spending reductions.

As governor, I'm spending my time focused in three areas: creating jobs, reducing the expense of government and schools.

We have got a - we've got a good federal work force, but we have too many people, and we're paying them too much money.

You know, in a workplace, when you shrink the size of a workforce, there is pain there. But there is no question: we have a government that we can no longer afford. That is the cold, hard fact. So we have to make this more efficient. We have to sunset programs that no longer work. We have to eliminate waste and fraud. We must do this.

Only in Washington do you hear a budget increase described as a cut.