Lisa Murkowski Quotes

If there's a sustainable job that will create sustainable value, people will hire for it.

The reality is that we are all economists. We all deal with scarcity as we make choices and calculate how to ration various items and resources that we consume, produce and utilize.

I think what's been lacking from our discussion for a long time is really that other part of what a Budget chair does, which is set the priorities for this country in terms of making sure we invest in the right places, in education, in job training, and to make sure we do a balanced approach moving forward.

It is a terribly hard job to spend a billion dollars and get your money's worth.

This notion that we cannot be about jobs and stewardship of the environment is just simply not right. We've always done that well as a country. We haven't had to choose.

It's one thing to get the money apportioned in the budget; the other is to utilise it completely.

Even an ideal set of trade-offs must—and should—leave a whole spectrum of unmet needs, because the cost of wiping out the last vestige of any problem is leaving other problems in more dire condition. In short, trade-offs must be incremental rather than categorical, if limited resources are to produce optimal results in any social system as a whole.

The amount of resources we put in are disparate. We put billions of dollars into fuel-efficient technologies. How much are we putting into energy behavior change in a credible, systematic, testing way?

When resources are degraded, we start competing for them, whether it is at the local level in Kenya, where we had tribal clashes over land and water, or at the global level, where we are fighting over water, oil, and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources.

I've always been a strong supporter of environmental protection and initiatives in that area. But I'm willing to set priorities. If we have to make reductions in one place, we'll have to-in order to increase another place, I'm willing to do that.

I have often said China is not lacking in material resources. The question is whether we can make full and good use of them.

Economic development is what's going to make mountaintop removal palatable.

We cannot meet the needs of a growing country and a growing economy by simply maintaining our current level of effort. We must do more.

We have a responsibility to make sure that the limited resources we have are spent efficiently and effectively and that programs achieve their mission.

America has to ask itself not what it wants, but what it can afford.

Everything we do in public policy prevents us from doing something else. To govern is to choose.

People should decide 'are you willing to spend all this money to go to Mars?' I think the average person on the ground would never spend that amount of money - they have to spend it on something that makes sense and this is definitely saving our planet.

In abandoning the understanding that things - services, goods, wars, and houses - have costs, we risk becoming infantilised, incapable of making decisions about government or finance, and perhaps above all about the environment, the wellbeing of the planet upon which we depend and which our children will inherit from us.

The second thing we did was said, OK, we've now identified the risk, but what do you want to do with the money? Because it's not enough to have risk; you've got to have a meaningful use for the money we give you.

You cannot blame the mismanagement of the economy or the fact that we have not invested adequately in education in order to give our people the knowledge, the skills and the technology that they need in order to be able to use the resources that Africa has to gain wealth.

The term 'natural resources' confuses people. 'Natural resources' are not like a finite number of gifts under the Christmas tree. Nature is given, but resources are created.

Most of the well-developed world - Australia, Western Europe - they develop their resources base, they inventory it, they develop it, and they view it as a good source of jobs and revenue. We are a country that for too long has taken affordable energy for granted.

Conservation is not without a cost.

… work [jobs] and the environment should not be played off against each other.

What's the logic of investing millions in agriculture if it will not pay off?