Barack Obama Quotes

All Democrats for the last 30 years have tried to stimulate the economy by giving 'tax cuts' to people who don't pay taxes.

I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits. I inherited a trillion-dollar deficit. ... This notion that somehow we caused the deficits is just wrong. It's just not true. ... If they start trying to give you a bunch of facts and figures suggesting that it's true, what they're not telling you is they baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts and a prescription drug plan that they didn't pay for and the wars.

On GOP Tax Cuts: They'll take food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to the wealthiest.

I don't know how anyone can keep a straight face and say they are for deficit reduction while they insist on a permanent tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, completely unpaid for.

You can always raise taxes on the rich, but that will not solve the deficit problem.

When I see the sort of mindless tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to education, I just think we've got it exactly backward in this country.

Some of the huge tax breaks that we gave to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population in this country during the Bush era have contributed significantly to the deficit.

We ought to pay down the national debt, ... The American people are tired of people who make promises about cutting taxes that they cannot keep.

To the extent that we've got a fiscal crisis right now, part of it is prompted by a bullheaded insistence on the part of the president, for example, that we should extend all of his tax cuts, make all of them permanent.

The [Donald] Trump plan would increase the national debt a little over a $1 trillion a year, the Trump plan would reduce taxes at all income levels with, of course, the biggest tax cuts going to the richest taxpayers as they always do.

I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn't really need to pay down the debt - outrageous in my view.

We simply cannot afford to give the reigns of government so someone who will double down on trickle down

I cannot in good conscience vote in favor of tax cuts, irrespective of their size, or to which segment of the population they are targeted. Nor can I support any spending increases that are not related to improving our nation's defense from the obvious and serious threats facing us today.

[T]hese tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth.

Hearing politicians tell us we can't afford a tax cut is like listening to a glutton tell you he can't afford a diet. In no other context do people talk about paying for money they don't have. I can't pay for your refusal to give me money because I need a yacht.

Ronald Reagan felt very great regret about the deficits to which he contributed on his watch.

Something got screwed up in terms of your priorities if you think it's more important to get rid of the dividend tax than it is to take care of 11 million kids.

For those of you who don't understand Reaganomics, it's based on the principle that the rich and the poor will get the same amount of ice. In Reaganomics, however, the poor get all of theirs in winter.

Reagan proved deficits don't matter.

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.

I think I should pay more taxes... but everything they take from me should go to reduce the debt.

You know and I know and economists know that trickle-down economics doesn't work.

I mean, the Obama position has been, 'We think government ought to be spending this money, not the people who earn it.'

Sadly, the President's budget proposal for the upcoming year once again puts cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans over addressing our country's severe fiscal problems.

I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.