John Fleming Quotes

There's no reason to raise taxes. Taxes should be lower... The problem we have is that government spends too much, not that taxes are too low.

GOP candidates routinely sign a pledge never, ever to raise taxes. Democratic candidates aren't even asked to sign a parallel pledge never, ever to cut entitlements.

Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.

The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay.

The most important area for spending restraint is entitlement reform.

How does one leave Social Security and Medicare untouched, grow defense by more than $50 billion, slash taxes, launch a $1 trillion infrastructure program - and not explode the deficit and national debt?

Where Republicans encourage popular myths about taxes, spending, and climate change, Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.

Trillions of dollars in out-of-control entitlement spending cannot be remedied by cuts in NASA, or even in the entire discretionary budget, defense included. Rather, the financial bleeding needs to be staunched where the hole is and nowhere else.

There is a lot of fiscal conservatives in the United States senate that didn't vote for that because we understand that national security spending is not the reason why we have a debt. Our debt is being driven by the way Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and, by the way, the interest on the debt is structured in the years to come.

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.

You remember had this gigantic clock in the arena showing the size of the national debt. And Paul told America, if you elect Republicans, we can fix that. But, if Paul Ryan was being honest, he would've pointed to the debt clock and said, we built that.

I'm not going to raise taxes; I'm not going to have a wage increase for public employees.

It's clear that the medium and long-run fiscal challenges facing the country have to do with the rise of entitlement spending, they have to do with the longer run imbalances that we've created in the structure of the system.

Obama's claim is that he wants to give. The GOP is saying it wants to take.

You've got to either say you're going to cut taxes and find some spending cuts. I think we ought to reform long-term entitlement spending in the country, but you can't out of one side of your mouth say, 'Yes, we're for tax cuts, we're for spending discipline, and we're for bringing down the debt.'

I am very concerned about anything that says 'revenue' because let's just be honest; revenue for Democrats has become code for tax increases.

When Republicans say, 'The first thing you do when you do deficit reduction is reduce rates,' it would be like Democrats saying, 'The first thing you do when you do deficit reduction is provide free Medicare at age 55.' We'd like to do that! But it won't bring the deficit down. That's for sure.

The discussion in Washington has changed dramatically. I mean, it's no longer a question of should we address entitlements - it's no longer a question of do we need to reduce spending in the future.

On economic policy, my support of smaller government, lower taxes and economic reform is consistent with the mainstream of the Republican Party in the United States and with many Democrats as well.

In the case of the Democrats' 2009 budget request, the statement of need could not have been articulated any clearer: We need more spending, historic new tax hikes, and greater control over the way American families live their lives.

To be fair, Republicans are not blameless. The deficit began to spiral out of control on President Bush's watch.

In the end, all Republicans want to make sure we don't increase taxes. That's where we differ with the Democrats.

The Democratic party favors low tariffs and no surplus in the treasury; but when its opponents, in their eagerness to favor the manufacturing interest keep the tariffs so high as to accumulate a surplus in the treasury, our policy is to return the money, as nearly as may be, to the people from whom it ought not to have been taken.

I'd love to see lower spending levels, and in absence of lower spending levels, I'd love to see us reallocate where some of that spending is and really address the entitlements that continue growing.

Voters want conflicting things. They want a lot of government spending, but they don't want higher taxes.