Rick Perry Quotes

Folks, this government isn't too big to fail, it's too big to succeed.

Some faces may change in the top-heavy, bloated bureaucracy of Washington and all the state governments, but the bureaucracy will remain intact.

America has got the equivalent of stage three cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in.

Congress seems to thrive on breaking promises and passing unfunded mandates down to local government. It's really just a matter of priorities.

I think Americans are - particularly, independent voters are looking at Washington, and they see too many taxes, too much spending, too much debt, too many Washington takeovers, and they want to provide a check and a balance to what they see as a runaway, overreaching Washington government.

We have seen an outrageous increase in the size, scope, and intrusiveness of the federal government.

The American people think the government in Washington is too big. That it spends too much. And - and that it's totally out of control. They want something done about it.

I've always been fond of the saying that when it comes to oversight and reform, the federal government does two things well: nothing and overreact.

I've lived in Washington now for 44 years, and that's a lot of folly to witness up close. Whatever confidence and optimism I felt towards the central government when I got here on January 1, 1970 has pretty much dissipated at the hands of the government.

Our constituents did not send us to Washington to shut down the government. They sent us here to make it more accountable.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

Whether you're a veteran or a millennial, it's hard to argue that big government has solved your problems efficiently, if at all.

So far at least, the Department of Government Efficiency looks like something of a misnomer. It’s early days but it seems less DOGE and more DOGA, a Department of Government Accountability. Since that acronym doesn’t really work, perhaps it could be called Making American Government Accountable—and you could even save a few hundred thousand dollars by repurposing some red hats.

The major functions of the government are … operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it.

There are no checks and balances if the government is wrong, if a private entrepreneur makes a mistake, he goes bankrupt, the losses are cut, if he bets wrong, he loses, if the government bets wrong, they just get bigger, they just appropriate more money, it's a bottomless pit, because they either get it from the tax payers or run it off a printing press.

Frankly, I'm fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about family values. Our families have values. But our government doesn’t.

It’s tough for Washington to pass complicated legislation.

How much we all suffer from lack of oversight from the government.

Today, the Federal Government is simply trying to do too much.

We are staring down the Federal government gun barrel of a runaway Federal Congress—absolutely runaway.

Government is not guaranteed to work right.

The FBI and our entire government has become a bureaucracy. Sick, tired, and old as far as technology is concerned. This has to change.

The government generally is just too top-heavy.

Washington's foot-dragging, obstructionism, and overreach must end.

There simply is no greater threat to individual liberty and the viability of our great nation than the threat that comes from the continued consolidation of power in Washington, a consolidation that flies in the face of the division of power between the federal government and the states that is required by the Constitution.