Jon Huntsman Jr. Quotes

I was able to promote a strong defense budget when it could have been cut a lot more severely.

Contrary to … conventional wisdom, the consequence of past U. S. Defense cuts were not bad …. austerity can be useful in forcing Washington to think strategically, something it rarely does when times are flush.

Austerity [in the Defense Department] meant that risks had to be managed, not eliminated.

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

I've made more cuts than any governor has ever made.

As Secretary of Defense my job would be much easier if I didn't have to put up with [budget] cuts.

At a time of tight budgets, unless something is really broken and not working, they [his congressional colleagues] just don't get excited about it.

As governor, I cut $5 billion in spending.

I am a governor who left office with a smaller general fund budget than when we started.

You know, even people who talk about cutting spending and they go 'That's not the spending that I was actually talking about that you're supposed to be cutting.' Well, we have to be looking across the board.

As Indiana's governor, I balanced eight budgets, never raised taxes, and left the largest surplus in state history. It wasn't always easy. Cuts had to be made and some initiatives deferred. Occasionally I had to say 'no.'

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.

My goal was to do the best job I could in governing the state of Wisconsin, in some cases making very tough decisions to have to bring our spending in line with the resources we had at the state level.

In a budget this massive, there are certainly areas where I think we could do much better.

It is being alleged that the Federal Government is 'cutting' spending. In fact, we are not 'cutting' anything. Defense spending under this budget would rise by 4.3 percent over last year. Other discretionary spending would also rise.

The President has a short time to let people know that he is serious about getting spending under control.

[The] up-and-down pattern of [defense] spending over the last 18 years averages out to below zero percent real growth. In other words, if defense spending had followed a path of zero percent real growth, the U.S. probably could have obtained more defense for its dollar.

Retrenchment president’s often like covert action. It’s cheaper. It’s secret.

When we're told, "You have to find $750 billion to cut", and we say "OK, we can do that; ....the Congress shouldn't turn around and say, "Not in my district" or "Not my weapons system".

To simply argue that public spending must always go up and never be cut is irresponsible.

Government must continue to live within its means.

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.

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

The American people, in their own families, they understand that you have to do that. You have to make the tough decisions. You have to get your budget. You have got to put it in order. And they expect their elected officials and their leaders to do likewise.

Defense spending as a share of the economy dropped significantly during the early 1990s, and that was one of the things, along with other policy changes, that put us back on the path to a balanced budget.