Lamar Alexander Quotes

Why should a city be mandated to do something by the federal government or state government without the money to do it?

Through the 1990s, the fracturing of Tasmanian Aboriginal politics was given impetus by the ongoing corruption of a number of black organisations started under federal government programmes, with large amounts of public money being lost.

In America ... who is to stop congress from spending too much money. They will not stop themselves, that is certain. Everybody has to think about that now. Who is to stop them.

If the government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes for you and me for? Why don't it make what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the balance to us?

For me, appropriations bills are the glue. These are the bills that must move, no matter what, to keep the government functioning as a reliable element of our society. The Appropriations Committee shouldn't be the most political place to be; it's the place where we have to make the institution function for the country.

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.

I can't help thinking if she - the director of a government agency - is this ignorant about what funding is available and where the money comes from - how often lower-level bureaucrats must give wrong answers when people are looking for help to start a business.

If the government mandates anything with a price tag on it, then it ought to fund the project.

I've never understood the allure of putting your name on a building that was built with taxpayers' money.

Congress passes bills that appropriate money. Congress says, 'We're building this bridge or funding that defense project, and they cost this much.'

There are some terrorist organizations, there are some organized crime organizations, that launder money through charities and make donations to charities. That's not the purpose of charitable donations in Canada, so we're becoming increasingly strict on the subject.

We do all the appropriating. They do not do any of it down at the White House. They send a budget up here, and we don't have to pay any attention it to at all. We do what we want to do.

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve.

The President sends us a billion-page paper that shows how he would spend the money if he were spending the money. He doesn't have the authority to spend the money. He doesn't spend $1 of the money.

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

Money never seems to be interested in strengthening regulatory agencies, for example, but always in subverting them, in making them miss the danger signs in coal mines and in derivatives trading and in deep-sea oil wells.

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.

A boatload of government money is indeed a gift. Unless, I suppose, you're one of the saps paying for the cargo.

Let's take up the most important issues first. Let's take up the reauthorizations first; let's take up the appropriations bill first, not wait until four days beforehand - no one has mentioned anything, and, all of a sudden, somebody looks at their watch and says, 'Hey, in four days, the government is going to run out of money.'

My slogan when I ran was that there is no such thing as government money, there is only taxpayer's money, and that cut pretty deep.

So in the House and Senate, we own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill.

Congress has the constitutional responsibility to control the power of the 'purse'.

If you were starting from scratch to invent an instrument that could impose fiscal discipline, the last one on earth you would come up with is the United States government.

We shall take whatever action is necessary to contain the growth of the money supply. The government, unlike so many of its predecessors, will face up to economic realities.

U.N. officials said today they desperately need $7 billion to help people cope with disasters, but they're having a hard time getting people to send rescue money. Here's what the UN should do: Invest in bad mortgages, run a bank into the ground, give yourself a bonus, get some spa treatments and, in no time, the government will send you $750 billion.