Rand Paul Quotes

We don't spend money properly in Washington, D.C. We jump these massive bills to massive bills.

We could say the government spend like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors, because the sailors are spending their own money.

Every American knows there are government expenses that are absolutely not necessary. I disagree with the very idea that our government is spending $2.4 trillion in the most efficient manner.

The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.

Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their votes of other people's money, have every motive to be lavish and none to economize.

Both parties in Washington waste too much of your money. When I worked there, I helped expose waste and abuse by government contractors.

The real problem with the government is not the deficit; it is that the government spends too much money.

I've been Secretary of the Treasury for 147 days, and in that 147 days I've written $133 billion worth of hot checks.

You spend a billion here and a billion there. Sooner of later it adds up to real money.

I cannot consent to act the part of a mere financier, to become a contriver of taxes, a dealer of loans, a seeker of resources for the purposes of supporting useless baubles, of increasing the number of idle and dissipated members of the community, of fattening contractors, pursers, and agents, and of introducing … patronage, corruption, and rottenness which you so justly execrate.

If you undertake to divide all these appropriations and have many committees where there should be but one, you will enter upon a path of extravagance that you cannot foresee … until we find the Treasury of the country bankrupt.

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money.

I came to Congress on the promise of cutting wasteful government spending. There are plenty of examples of the government playing loose with taxpayer money, but none more so than how we spend our foreign aid dollars.

Trillion-dollar bailouts, bloated budgets, and boondoggle spending packages aren't working, at least for my friends and neighbors.

If we could manage our own finances the way the Congress does the nation's, we'd all be living in high cotton and eating high on the hog.

There isn't a single government agency that can't function. There's more money in this federal government, there's more money allocated than these people can possibly spend. They have to concoct asinine ways to spend it, like advertising for new food stamp users. I've gotten to the point, I'm just so righteously indignant and offended at the very idea that our government could ever run out of money when we've got a printing press, for crying out loud. Printed three and a half trillion dollars over seven years and flooded Wall Street with it.

Let's pass a bill to cover the moon with yogurt that will cost $5 trillion today. And then let's pass a bill the next day to cancel that bill. We could save $5 trillion.

When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty.

The national budget is not a safe-deposit box. It is a spray can.

In some egregious cases, cities built new stadiums even while their citizens were still paying off old stadiums that had since closed. This is corporate welfare run amok, and a gross misuse of American citizens' tax money - something the government must treat with respect.

American voters should understand that Congress will always find a way to spend every last dollar sent to Washington. Remember, politicians get votes by promising everything to everyone, always at the expense of some other invisible taxpayers. ...The federal government cannot maintain a budget surplus any more than an alcoholic can leave a fresh bottle of whiskey untouched in the cupboard.

First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40 percent of our national income.

We got plenty of money in Washington. What we need is more priority.

It's not fair to say that Congress spends money like a drunk sailor. At least the sailor is spending his own money!