Timothy Geithner Quotes

If you're opposed to the budget I submitted to the General Assembly, you're for a tax increase.

If we increase spending, we have got to raise taxes or any combination.

it would be nice to have low taxes, but we have to pay our bills in this country.

In the name of short-term stimulus, he [Obama] will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government.

You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.

It was an absurd theory that by cutting taxes you would increase government revenues, because the growth of the economy would create an overflow of taxes that would fall into the government coffers.

We have to deal with two issues. Spending and taxes.

It is time to recognize a simple fact of life. Contrary to what some of my colleagues seem to believe, tax cuts do not pay for themselves.

People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can't live within its income.

Well, the taxes that everyone else is paying are supporting lots of programs that were in place prior to Obama's new spending. So new spending has too be paid for by new taxes, or by eliminating existing tax breaks. And Obama wants that burden to be borne exclusively by the rich.

What you really want to do is sit down and find a place that you can control government spending and raise more revenue.

We are the ones looking out for the middle class. Who do think pays for the endless expansion of government? Its middle class taxpayers. Our reforms protect middle class taxpayers.

I want to look at the whole package, but I definitely want to protect the middle-class taxpayer, first and foremost.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

If you could bring to me a majority of people to say that we're going to have $10 of spending cuts for $1 of revenue enhancement, put me in, coach.

If the Republican Party continues to take the view that there must be no tax increases, we're stuck. Capitalism can't work without safety nets or fiscal prudence, and we need both in a sustainable balance.

When President Obama asked Congress to raise the debt ceiling $2 trillion and offered sequestration as an offset, I opposed it. I did not believe we should put the country $2 trillion deeper in debt and impose irresponsible massive cuts to our national security.

Tax cuts are like sex: When they are good, they are very, very good. And when they are bad, they are still pretty good.

When a liberal says they are going to soak the rich, the middle class will get drenched.

My biggest objection to raising taxes is that it feeds the government addiction to spending money.

The best legislator is the one who votes for all appropriations and against all taxes.

There's a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think its an investment.

Taxes are forever; spending cuts are transitory.

When you’re spending 24 billion dollars in pork barrel transportation projects how can you go to the American people and talk about tax increases.

We want the benefits of government services ranging from security in our old age to the best national defense possible, but we scream when the bill for these services comes due in the form of higher taxes.