Pat Buchanan Quotes

There are two important things to remember about 'entitlements': They are hugely popular programs for a very good reason, and actual sensible 'reform' would mean improving them, not sacrificing them at the altar of 'fiscal responsibility.'

No major entitlement, once it has been implemented, has ever been unwound.

The true enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who defend an imploding status quo.

Social Security's not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you've got to put all of it on the table.

Look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you.

When you talk about entitlement programs, it's not just about - it's not about cutting those programs. It is about saving those programs. Those programs are on a path of fiscal unsustainability.

If you throw a welfare state into the middle of a democracy, it’s very hard to get rid of the beast.

Welfare is killing this country.

It is not in accordance with the genius of our Government or our country to pay pensions.

Our pandering politicians compete to add names to the dependency of entitlement rolls instead of evaluating the success of these programs by how many people leave the dole and are restored to an independence. And these bulging entitlements are saddling our offspring with unsustainable generational debt.

People like entitlements. That's why we spend so much on them.

Americans never would alter the way entitlement programs are funded or education administered without serious study and widespread debate.

The welfare state may be well-intentioned, but it is a Ponzi scheme

Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them — take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.

You do not have to cut finds from the elderly sick and still keep the yacht subsidy;

What begins in Washington as simple, garden-variety grasping becomes an entitlement, the argument being that the longer the benefit has lived, the more the beneficiaries have built their lives around it, so ending it would be disruptive.

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.

Too often in Washington, we only look at the recipient side: How does the budget affect either those who receive or don't receive benefits.

We should be reforming our entitlement programs to empower people.

The most important area for spending restraint is entitlement reform.

We must unequivocally reject any cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits.

Everybody in this society that has been lurching toward socialism and collectivism for 40 years has their hand out. And the propensity of Congress is to spend, spend, elect, elect. That hasn't changed, and it isn't going to change for a long time.

Nobody wants to take a hard look of the entitlement system to see what it is.

We are concerned about benefit tourism.

Republicans' focus on defunding or scaling back Obamacare - an unpopular entitlement program - rather than entitlements generally, namely Social Security and Medicare, has raised questions about their true objective. But critics forget that spending is fungible.