Donald Trump Quotes

I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can't be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they're not getting some other matter.

'Yes' is a far more potent word than 'no' in American politics. By adopting the positions which animate the political agenda for the other side, one can disarm them and leave them sputtering with nothing to say.

Historically, the minority party in Congress votes against raising the debt limit, forcing the majority party to whip its members into casting politically painful votes in favor.

I am willing to work with anybody who wants to have a serious conversation about our fiscal future. We're not going to do this under the threat of blowing up the entire economy. I will not negotiate over Congress' responsibility to pay the bills that have already been racked up. I don't know how I can be more clear about this.

Like a cowboy saddling a bucking stallion, Republican leaders tried to tame the Tea Party while riding it to victories.

There's no debt limit in the Constitution.

I can tell you if you look at the polls, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, they do not think we should increase the debt limit.

It is simply science fiction fantasy to say that, if you do not raise the debt ceiling, that everything is going to collapse.

The only way you can raise the debt ceiling is to change the trajectory of spending - that's my personal preference. But I want the Ways and Means Committee to offer up a solution.

Look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you.

A lot of the Republicans wanted exactly what Barack Obama wanted, exactly what Nancy Pelosi wanted, exactly what Harry Reid wanted, which is to raise the debt ceiling, but they wanted to be able to tell what they view as their foolish, gullible constituents back home they didn't do it.

The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument.

The debate we won't be having is whether or not the debt ceiling should be raised. We will not have a situation where people will hold the American economy hostage in order to achieve a specific agenda - at least not until 2013. So we think that is incredibly important as a matter of economic good.

Hikes in the debt ceiling - without any political demands from the opposition party - had been routine until President Obama took office.

The Democrats want to save more on defense so they can spend more money to buy votes through the welfare state.

The debt ceiling serves no useful purpose.

I don't see why anybody's playing chicken with the debt ceiling.

I'm not going to raise the debt ceiling.

If we reach the debt ceiling, we don't have to default. Getting to that point just won't allow us to reach new debt.

We would be somewhat foolish to work out something on stopping us from going over the cliff and then a month or six weeks later Republicans pull the same game they did before and say, 'We're not going to do anything - unless this happens, we're not going to agree to increasing the debt ceiling.' I agree with the president, it has to be a package deal.

The president says we need to raise the debt ceiling because America pays its bills. No if we paid our bills we wouldn't have all this debt. The reason we have to raise the debt ceiling is because we can't pay our bills and we have to borrow money because we don't have any money to pay our bills.

Nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States just to extract political concessions.

I would use the debt limit. I don't want to say - I want to be unpredictable, because, you know, we need unpredictability. Everything is so predictable with our country.

If I was in Congress, I would not vote to raise the debt ceiling.

As a Democrat, one of the things that frustrates me the most is there are a lot of times we just don't get in the fight. We ask pretty please if we can have things or we make the argument for why it is the best thing to do, and then wait patiently for the other side to agree to come along. We negotiate. We start our opening position by negotiating.