Wyndham Lewis Quotes

The President has a short time to let people know that he is serious about getting spending under control.

Britain can only spend what it can afford.

Austerity causes constipation; excess, diarrhea.

You have to separate what needs to be done to avoid the fiscal cliff and what needs to be done longer range. It's a mistake to essentially collapse those two - they're not the same. I don't think you can achieve everything at once.

Again, the American people expect us to do what they are doing. It's tightening the belt, it's learning how to do more with less. That's a reality today, and we've got to do that in order to get the private sector growing.

I think the whole issue of a debt ceiling makes no sense to me whatsoever. Anybody who is remotely adroit at arithmetic doesn't need a debt ceiling to tell you where you are.

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.

There is a very serious fiscal-policy question of, 'Are we running our overall fiscal policy such that we as a government can pay our bills?'

When millions of Americans are tightening their belts, folks have the right to expect their elected officials to do the same.

First of all, I don't like to speak about austerity. I'd prefer to speak of fiscal discipline. Fiscal discipline, in the end, amounts to austerity if it is not accompanied by other policies.

Monetary discipline forces fiscal discipline on the politicians as well.

You eventually have to figure out how to balance the books. So that's the reason I gave up my day job to come do this was to go fight to create the space where spending matches America's capacity to tax, and that means economic growth and a smaller, humbler federal government.

Households and businesses cut expenses every day. Passing a financial down payment alongside the debt limit sends the right message to the public, and gives members of Congress greater comfort, or cover, depending on your perspective.

You will see the President being very, very tough on spending.

Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.

Families and businesses are tightening their belts to make ends meet - and Washington should too.

If the program goes off track again due to recession, this should not become a pretext for the imposition of more austerity measures.

If you ask the question of Americans, should we pay our bills? One hundred percent would say yes. There's a significant misunderstanding on the debt ceiling. People think it's authorizing new spending. The debt ceiling doesn't authorize new spending; it allows us to pay obligations already incurred.

For a quarter-century, and changing only very recently, the main IMF prescription has been budgetary belt-tightening for patients much too poor to own belts. IMF led austerity has frequently resulted in riots, coups, and the collapse of public services.

When it comes to budget cuts, everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Under no circumstances will I allow expenditures upon works not clearly national.

Political leaders cannot survive as advocates of near-permanent austerity on the basis of directives imposed from abroad.

The deficit had become a symbol of our inability to control and manage the cost of government.

It is no part of my job as Chancellor of the Exchequer to put before the House of Commons proposals for the expenditure of public money. The function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as I understand it, is to resist all demands for expenditure made by his colleagues and, when he can no longer resist, to limit the concession to the barest point of acceptance.

It is easier to use accounting gimmicks than it is to make hard political choices