Paul LePage Quotes

I don't like a lot of social programs either because it makes you non-productive.

I knew that good people who wanted to be a part of the American dream have become trapped in dependency because the federal government and the state government had made it in their economic interest not to take a job because the benefits that they didn't work were better. I changed that.

It's not good for government to tell people that the world owes them a living and that things are free.

But we will say something else. That for far too long in this country, people who can work, people who are able to work, and people who choose not to work: you cannot go on claiming welfare like you are now.

If Americans are reluctant to go on the dole that's because they have a healthy work ethic.

People still seem to think that they should vote themselves money. They seem to think there is stuff which they think is the government's job, when it's really the individual's job.

A lot of people have a sense-of-entitlement mentality that somebody else ought to do these things for them. People are mad at the government for not getting jobs for them. I don't understand why it's the government's responsibility.

Before they got vengeful, conservatives had some useful points to make about welfare. Government 'help' is too often guilt-assuaging gesture. It creates layers of wasteful bureaucracy. Too much help of the wrong sort creates a culture of dependency that swamps our ability to provide.

Is our national goal to place as many people on welfare, food stamp support, as we can possibly put on that program? Is that our goal? Is that a moral vision for the United States of America, just to see how many people we can place in a situation where they're dependent on the federal government for their food?

Our people want jobs. They don't want a safety net as a way of life.

Sometimes well-intentioned programs can lead to dependency and cause us to forget we have what it takes to attain the American dream.

But the indisputable fact is, a huge percentage of Obama's voters are basically wards of the state. There are millions of them, and they have no intention of voting for anyone who might want them to ever go out and work for a living - 'no matter what.'

Taxation is not charity. It is not voluntary. As we shrink the state and make government smaller, we will find that more and more people are able to take care of themselves.

Too many Mainers are dependent on government handouts. Government dependency has not - and never will - create prosperity.

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

The only method by which people can be supported is out of the effort of those who are earning their own way. We must not create a deterrent to hard work.

We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.

Do we really want a society in which the stigma of going on the dole has been erased?

Of course we have compassion. We just don't believe the safety net should be used as a hammock.

I'm sort of suspicious of most economic development projects, but the ones that encourage taxpayer-funded relocation bidding wars should be declared unconstitutional.

Fiscal prudence does not prevent government from providing shelter for the homeless, work for the idle, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute.

The more is given, the less the people will work for themselves

If we can spend the money to put a man on the moon, we ought to be able to find the funds to put a man on his feet.

The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.

There has been vast unemployment before and there will be again .... I would have little enthusiasm for any proposed remedy which seeks either palliation or tonic from the Public Treasury.