Tom Coburn Quotes

To add current expenses of the Government to the national debt ... and thereby pass the current cost of government to the next generation is not only bad financing but very bad statesmanship.

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

We have been maintaining a standard of living by putting things on the debt of the next generation.

Bill Clinton’s promises have the life span of a Big Mac on Air Force One.

We can’t afford the promises we have already made much less pile more on top of them.

Hookers have to deliver on their promise... unlike politicians.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Massive Federal Budget Deficits are only the most conspicuous sign of a society that has promised itself more than it could afford.

One of the cruellest things of all is to have a huge deficit in this country, meaning that everyone's children will be expected to pay back for our debt today. That is unfair as well.

The immediate effect of the deficit is to make you feel good, like when you go on a trip and pay later. You feel good, and then you get a hangover. The deficit makes you feel good - until you pay later.

Congress seems to thrive on breaking promises and passing unfunded mandates down to local government. It's really just a matter of priorities.

I don't want to remember 2005 as a year that the government heaped unnecessary burdens upon American families. Stealing from the poor and middle class and giving to the rich, while increasing the deficit, is hardly responsible.

Thanks to decades of accumulated federal budget deficits and, more significantly, imprudent Medicare and Social Security policies, we've stolen almost $60 trillion from our children.

China, Japan, and Asia in general have been happy to hold U.S. debt instruments in recent decades, but they will not prop up our spending habits forever…. The greatest threat facing America today is not terrorism, or foreign economic competition, or illegal immigration. The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation.

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

Lying is one of the techniques of politicians .... They are economical with the truth.

The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale

Americans are used to the clatter of campaign promises hitting ground as they are thrown out the window.

Those who say we can continue to indefinitely borrow from our children and grandchildren and generations to come in fact are eroding our ability to do what we ought to do in education, in health care and in other things.

… the betrayal of the American people by Franklin D. Roosevelt

Too many conservatives in our country want to run up enormous deficits in the hope that someone else will pay for it. This is not conservativism; it is alchemy or lunacy.

This is an administration that has gotten 600 Americans killed by not telling the truth. I don’t see why anyone would believe any of the political ads.

We aren't living the gospel of democracy and free enterprise today. We are merely preaching it. We have made only half of the combination work, and we've done that superlatively well. Free enterprise booms. But democracy staggers and reels under oppressive debts and inordinate operating costs-both the consequences of political failure.

Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.

I was in session through the winter and announced rodeos in the summer… There’s an amazing correlation ... in that there’s bull in each profession.