Nelson Peltz Quotes

People have no confidence that Washington, both sides of aisle, are coming together to try and do what's right for the economy.

I may sound naive, since everyone's decided the next two years are going to be all about 2016, but I look at what's happened over the years when there's been divided government. That's when we've done tax reform, that's when we've done entitlement reform - to move this economy forward on these big issues.

During the Reagan years, government shut down eight different times under a Democrat Congress. The president and Congress worked together and got things straightened out. Under the Carter years, again a Democrat Congress, the government shut down five times.

Since 1980, we've used reconciliation 22 times, and out of those times, Republicans used it 16 times. So, earth to my Republican friends, you can have your option but you cannot change these facts. They're in the Congressional Record.

We've had a tone-deaf White House that does not want to be reasonable. President Obama won't meet with the Republicans. It's all his way.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.

Obama has offered no solutions; his Democratic majority in the Senate has failed to produce a budget in 1,200 days; and they have both obstructed the Republicans' proposed remedies.

During the campaign for re-election, Barack Obama at least made vague references to a willingness to accept $3 trillion of reduced spending in exchange for a $1 trillion dollar tax increase.

If you ask people do you think that government should spend less money than what it takes in, most people agree with that.

I think what both Republicans and Democrats need to do and the leaders on both sides is to recognize that if sequester takes place, it would be disastrous for our national defense and very frankly for a lot of very important domestic programs. They have a responsibility to come together, find the money necessary to de-trigger sequester.

The truth is that as we move forward, if one side says we can't raise any taxes on anybody or any interest, and the other side says we can't cut anything, we're obviously not going to make progress on this. And our interest is in making progress on this.

I don't want a government shutdown. I don't think anyone does.

To be honest, I haven't seen much serious budget planning since the Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 elections and grabbed onto the Senate filibuster. It's not the White House's fault that John Boehner couldn't deliver on a bigger deal.

We cannot deal with the debt. The Democrats are not going to allow reductions in entitlements like Social Security. The Republicans will not allow one dime of additional taxes. We have a deadlock of democracy.

Has Washington become so dysfunctional that even when we all agree on something, we can’t get it done?

Congress is almost totally dysfunctional right now. All we've done this year and my first year in the Senate ... is barely keep the doors open.

In our political system it’s easier to block action than to act.

I think we have got to get the Republicans and the Democrats to get back to what I call the fiscal conservative, the issues that drive the tea parties.

Actually, as president of the Conference of Mayors, we passed the Simpson-Bowles plan as a template, as a template, as a frame work for moving forward and the president has done the same.

People listen to me, and they hear about a government they want, a government... that will cut spending, cut taxes, that will focus on private-sector job creation.

With gridlock the norm, Congress's approval rating is below 10 percent and the public has lost faith in its national leadership.

The Farm Bill is one of the only bills that provides substantial deficit reduction that passed the Senate this year. It only makes sense that this deficit reduction bill would be included in a larger deficit reduction agreement.

We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.

At the same time, Clinton was doing a lot things right, like the economy.

It's all right to agree or disagree on the balanced budget amendment. It's all right to talk about how we're going to appropriate.