Herbert Stein Quotes

The era of deficit denial is over

Tonight, I come before you to announce that the federal deficit, once so incomprehensibly large that it had eleven zeroes, will be, simply zero.

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

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.

Last year 100,000 people gathered on The Mall to Protest the deficit. We Republicans, over and over, castigated President Obama for creating a Trillion dollar deficit. I was against big deficits then, and I am agaist them now. Just because it is now Republicans doing all the spending, I am still opposed.... Those Republcians who voted for a tax cut and a spending increase are hypocrites.

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.

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

Tonight I come before you to announce that the Federal Deficit will be simply zero.

We give lip service to the importance of deficit reduction, but Americans oppose every single thing that you might do to reduce the deficit.

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.

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

We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy. The left wants to focus on the deficit so they can take us away from the focus on spending as a percentage of the economy.

As the President reviewed the state of the union and unveiled his second-term agenda, he fell short of adequately explaining how he intends to set America back on the course of fiscal responsibility and secure the fiscal health of the nation.

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

Defense spending as a share of the economy dropped significantly during the early 1990s, and that was one of the things, along with other policy changes, that put us back on the path to a balanced budget.

Our priority must be to build a path towards balancing the budget, and we cannot tolerate growing deficits.

I am a deficit hawk.

It is admitted on all sides that we must equalize the revenue and expenditures. The scheme of borrowing to make up an increasing deficit must, in the end, if continued, prove ruinous.

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.

The deficit only became a big problem in the Reagan-Bush years. For 12 years, Republican presidents talked about balancing the budget, but failed to propose one.

It is vital that we get these policies right as we take forward our plans to drive down the deficit and transform our economy.

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

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

It's time to cut up Uncle Sam's credit card.

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