Dave Barry Quotes

When all is lost, ask the I.R.S. - they'll find something.

The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These, covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which once entered is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of property and produce.

Each year, we learn that customer service diminishes. You may argue it's because the IRS budget has been cut, but I'm going to argue that it's because the IRS chooses to spend its funds in other areas like the Affordable Care Act, bonuses, and conferences.

The IRS takes your money. Congress uses our money to arm our enemies. The IRS takes more of your money. Congress uses that money to fight the enemies Congress just armed.

Another agency - the IRS - did not do as well under Republicans who control Congress. The IRS is largely flatlined in their spending, but they did get about 300 million more funding. But I can only be used to help people pay their taxes and answer questions. It can't be used for any other purpose.

Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return.

I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain. Fancy giving money to the Government! Nobody will see the stuff again. Well, they've not idea what money's for- Ten to one they'll start another war. I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'! Fancy giving money to the Government!

You're asking the government to control individual morality. This is a government that can't buy a toilet seat for under $600.

Today government touches everything in America and harms almost everything it touches. Federal, state, and local governments together spend 42 out of every 100 dollars we earn. Those who do the taxing and spending have long since ceased to work for the people as a whole. Rather, they work for themselves and for their clients-the education industry, the welfare culture, public-employee unions, etc.

I am no longer going to go along with this idea that we're going to keep spending and borrowing and taking over and raising taxes, that I'm going to do everything I can to change things.

For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government . . . costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching.

I would acknowledge that [Paul] Ryan has some really good ideas about things, and I think they'll get together, like taxes. Larry Kudlow, Stephen Moore, they've been supportive of Ryan's tax view and now they're very supportive of [Donald] Trump's. So I think that's got potential.

This stuff they are talking here in Congress costs the people of the United States $44 a page. That's beside what it costs to ship it to the asylums where it's read.

You always hear about waste and abuse in Washington. And usually it doesn't mean much, because nobody ever finds where that waste and abuse is.

There isn't a single government agency that can't function. There's more money in this federal government, there's more money allocated than these people can possibly spend. They have to concoct asinine ways to spend it, like advertising for new food stamp users. I've gotten to the point, I'm just so righteously indignant and offended at the very idea that our government could ever run out of money when we've got a printing press, for crying out loud. Printed three and a half trillion dollars over seven years and flooded Wall Street with it.

Taxpayers have spent more than $200 billion in the last decade on computer systems that are antiquated, incompatible, and not doing the job.

It's like Tiger Woods' wife, we should take a nine iron to the back windshield of big government spending and smash it out.

Well, Congress gave us a billion dollars to dig the hole, this gigantic hole. Bigger, much bigger than the hole in Geneva, Switzerland. Then they canceled the machine and gave us a second billion dollars to fill up the hole. Two billion dollars to dig a hole and fill it up. That is the wisdom of the United States Congress and it really makes you wonder: Is there intelligent life on the Earth? Certainly not in the United States Congress.

When your money is taken by a thief, you get nothing in return. When your money is taken through taxes to support needless bureaucrats, precisely the same situation exists. We are lucky, indeed, if the needless bureaucrats are mere easy-going loafers. They are more likely today to be energetic reformers busily discouraging and disrupting production.

You'll note that politicians no longer spend money, they invest it. Don't worry about paying more to the [IRS]. You aren't being taxed; you're taking a plunge on a fly-by-night stock issue.

Print neatly. That's the kind of advice that the IRS considers a "dynamite" tax tip. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.

It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.

A new report shows that medicare and Medicaid made more than $50 Billion in bad payments during fiscal year 2011. Under Obamacare, that'll become known as 'Tuesday.'

If you're looking for ways to cut waste in government, you can start with John Prescott.