Ronald Reagan Quotes

According to the National Priorities Project, military expenditures are 54% of the budget. The next biggest line item is 7%. And there are a whole bunch of 7 percents. So in short, we have a military budget surrounded by a lot of footnotes. This is not serving us well.

When the greatest part of the [U.S.] budget pays for our defense and the livelihood of retirees, it is pointless to pretend that public spending is an embarrassment consisting only of welfare and waste.

Does it sound outrageous to you that military spending for fiscal year 2000 will be almost $290 billion and all other domestic discretionary spending, such as education, job training, housing, Amtrak, medical research, environment, Head Start and many other worthwhile programs will total $246 billion, the biggest disparity in modern times ?

Spending on programs such as national defense and funding the operating budgets of all federal agencies represent only 39 percent of our yearly budget, an all-time low.

The Pentagon budget, like all government spending, is an expression of priorities.

Foreign policy debates are frequently segregated from domestic policy ones, so commentators who propose increasing the defense budget or sending more foreign aid are seldom asked to explain which domestic programs they’d cut or which taxes they’d raise, in order to find the money.

If you refuse to acknowledge that there is any waste that can be culled from the military budget, you are a big-government conservative, and you cannot lay claim to balancing the budget.

If you're worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it's almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

Of all government expenditures, defense spending is the... most stimulative to the economy.

Cut defense spending as part of cutting all federal spending.

I understand deficit spending. I was born in deficit spending.

Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.

Most people don't realize that two-thirds of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon. The U.S. government is an insurance company with an Army.

Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt; the United States continues to spend more on its military than do all other nations on earth put together, and military expenditures are not only the basis of the government's industrial policy; they also take up such a huge proportion of the budget that by many estimations, were it not for them, the United States would not run a deficit at all.

I cannot in good conscience vote in favor of tax cuts, irrespective of their size, or to which segment of the population they are targeted. Nor can I support any spending increases that are not related to improving our nation's defense from the obvious and serious threats facing us today.

So-called defense now absorbs sixty per cent of the national budget, and about twelve per cent of the Gross National Product.

I was able to promote a strong defense budget when it could have been cut a lot more severely.

What I say is, national defense is the most important thing we do in Washington, but there's still waste in the military budget.

It is being alleged that the Federal Government is 'cutting' spending. In fact, we are not 'cutting' anything. Defense spending under this budget would rise by 4.3 percent over last year. Other discretionary spending would also rise.

Let's push the Pentagon off the fiscal cliff.

The real problem with the government is not the deficit; it is that the government spends too much money.

Sound principles will not justify our taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate treasure for wars to happen we know not when, and which might not, perhaps, happen but from the temptations offered by that treasure.

Remember that every dollar spent by the federal government is spent in somebody's district.

The defense budget has become a jobs program.

Our system of keeping the federal government's books is a monument to the creativity of mankind ... We've cut government spending for 15 years in a row, and yet have spent more money in each of those years.