Lindsey Graham Quotes

Funding for sports (and the arts) are often the first things facing the chop in difficult times.

Let's push the Pentagon off the fiscal cliff.

There is no belt to tighten anymore.

If sequestration takes place, that's going to be a great setback. We don't need to be having something like sequestration that's going to cause these job losses - over 170 million jobs that could be lost.

Sequestration is leverage that should not be given up easily.

Sequestration was not designed to be anyone's ideal method for getting our hands around government spending, and it certainly isn't mine.

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

The sky isn't falling. We're not going to have more meteors hit because of sequestration.

If we have to continue to live under sequestration, it will have a maximum impact on our ability to fulfill the president's strategic guidance. We can't do it all. It's as simple as that, with the limitations of the budget as severe as they are. These deep, abrupt cuts have forced us to make decisions that are not in the interest of America.

If the economy is strained, then Social Security, like the rest of the government, will be, too.

Governments are out of control, irresponsible, never have enough money, never tighten their own belts, and when they are forced to, they always threaten to shut down police departments and teachers and all these things.

Higher taxes is the road to ruin. We must and we will shrink our government, and that means making some tough choices, tightening our belts.

President Obama's reckless defense cuts that are hanging over our cloud, hanging over the horizon could put almost 44,000 jobs at stake right here in Pennsylvania. we are not going to let that happen. You know why? Because No. 1, national defense is the first priority of the federal government.

Well, no American wants to in any way hurt our capabilities to national defense, but that doesn't mean an unlimited amount of money, and a blank check for anything they want at any time, for any purpose. Not at all.

Being a defense hawk and a budget hawk are not mutually exclusive.

Britain has taken itself out as a major player in the international system, at least for a while, with the kind of cuts that they've made in their national security budget.

I've made more cuts than any governor has ever made.

I do not intend to dispute in any way the need for defence cuts and the need for government spending cuts in general. I do not share a not in my backyard approach to government spending reductions.

In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.

The closest thing you ever get to a cut is a decrease in the rate of increase of government spending.

The defense budget has become a jobs program.

Funding cuts translate into lives lost, not dreams deferred.

Economy is demanded in every branch of the government at all times, but especially in periods like the present, of depression in business and distress among the people. The severest economy must be observed in all public expenditures, and extravagance stopped wherever it is found, and prevented wherever in the future it may be developed. If the revenues are to remain as now, the only relief that can come must be from decreased expenditures. But the present must not become the permanent condition of the government.

The defense industry understands that the military budgets will continue to be cut until a new threat comes along.

Contrary to … conventional wisdom, the consequence of past U. S. Defense cuts were not bad …. austerity can be useful in forcing Washington to think strategically, something it rarely does when times are flush.