Fiorello H. La Guardia Quotes

We must get rid of deficit spending which finances the political schemes of today by mortgaging the future of tomorrow.

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..

Let us have the courage to stop borrowing to meet continuing deficits. Revenues must cover expenditures by one means or another. Any government, like any family, can, for a year, spend a little more than it earns. But you know and I know that a continuation of the habit means the poor house.

Of course we have to address the deficit if we win.

Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more.

The first order of business is the elimination of the annual deficit.

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

We are worried about the size of the deficit, which is why the president is pleased that the House and Senate have followed his lead in cutting the deficit in half over the next five years.

If you don't get spending under control, eventually you're going to have a big tax increase.

I think where I differ a little bit, we absolutely have to think about the deficit looking down the road. And certainly that's something the president has said that we need to, as the economy recovers, have a plan in place for getting it down.

There is a difficult leap between talking about balancing the budget and actually doing it.

I personally do not worship at the alter of a balanced budget.

The reason Congress hasn't balanced the budget is that the sky hasn't fallen lately.

The national budget is perhaps the most important and least understood documents in Washington.

Like Ike [President Eisenhower] did. Talk economy and then spend away.

The only way to meet the situation [the financial crisis] is spend less money and to run the City of New York within the limits of our resources. Unless you do this, gentlemen, you will have a difficult problem confronting you by the end of this year and the taxpayers of 1922 and the years thereafter will have to pay the price of our present lack of prudence or our unwillingness to economize at the proper time.

The era of deficit denial is over

Never in the nation’s history had a president proposed large, simultaneous spending increases and tax cuts when the federal budget already had a deficit.

Congress must do what we said we would and find ways to pay for bills we propose so we don't leave future generations mired in debt.

What's really important to me is that we have fiscally responsible balanced budgets.

Unlike the federal government, most states don't have the option of running a deficit.

Look, I am not worried about Washington cutting too much spending too fast. I mean, the kinds of spending cuts we're talking about just right now are $100 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget.

Bush has never sent over a balanced budget.

The deficit - the U.S. knows our deficit is too large. We are committed to bringing it down. We are bringing it down. The deficit came in for fiscal year '05 at considerably below where it was the prior year.

I've criticized Republicans for their lack of fiscal discipline when they controlled Congress before 2007. However, that is no excuse to just continue with more of the same or, as the case is now, to make it worse. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's budget, we will double the national debt in five years and triple it in 10.