Alan Greenspan Quotes

A long term tax cut is not a tax cut at all unless it is accompanied by a spending cut.

We'll set our approach to borrowing, to spending, to taxation, in a sensible way on a sensible timescale.

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

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

Even with not having a balanced budget at this time, I support tax cuts. That will help limit spending.

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

Let us act with our eyes open. We are going to have a deficit next fiscal year and the year after that.

Let’s make this the year where we are either going to get rid of the deficit or get rid of the idea that we are going to get rid of the deficit..

The best scheme of finance is, to spend as little as possible; and the best tax is always the lightest.

Fortunately, good policy, true principles, and effective leadership work whenever they are tried. When we reduce government, balance budgets, and keep taxes as low as possible, states respond in a positive way.

The laws of normal economics dictate that lower taxes combined with increased spending will lead to bigger deficits.

I believe reduced spending, lower taxation, and economic growth go hand-in-hand.

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.

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

I don't believe we need any more taxes. We need to curtail the size of government. That seems to be a common thread among a majority of Americans out there that understand that we have to limit the size and scope of our government.

Past experience with fiscal austerity at home and overseas strongly suggests that it is best for the economy's long-run performance to restrain government spending rather than raise taxes.

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

Fiscal policy is not just, or even not even principally, the purview of the president.

People question me all the time about my experience. They question my experience in politics, and the first thing I always tell them is yes, I have no experience raising taxes over and over. I have no experience increasing the debt in a state.

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

In the current law we're seeing Social Security dwindle. And so what we're saying is if we're going to reduce taxes we just want to make sure that there are things within the law that pay for it.

We all know what the problems are: it's tax and spend. One party will tax and spend, the other party won't tax but will spend. It's both of them together.

You have to starve the Beast. That's one of the most important things about tax cuts. If you leave the money in Washington, it's going to be spent.

Look, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.

If you ask people do you think that government should spend less money than what it takes in, most people agree with that.