William Vickrey Quotes

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?'

If you ask people do you think that government should spend less money than what it takes in, most people agree with that.

Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more.

You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.

We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy. The left wants to focus on the deficit so they can take us away from the focus on spending as a percentage of the economy.

People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can't live within its income.

What you really want to do is sit down and find a place that you can control government spending and raise more revenue.

As a fiscal conservative, I think that our government should pay for itself.

If the U.S. Government was a company, the deficit would be $5 trillion because they would have to account by general accepted accounting principles. But actually they encourage government spending, reckless government spending, because the government can issue Treasury bills at extremely low interest rates.

We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy.

If you raise taxes, it won't reduce the deficit. The other team will simply spend the resources.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.

I do not pretend to step out of my own sphere and to control the internal management of other departments, but it seems to me that as Secretary of the Treasury, I may ask, that, while peace continues, the aggregate of the expenditure of those departments be kept within bounds such as will preserve the equilibrium between the national revenue and expenditure without recurrence to loans.

Politicians have a natural inclination to spend in general, even as they disagree fiercely about what, specifically, to spend on.

There is nothing more important for a government than getting its budget through.

If the government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes for you and me for? Why don't it make what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the balance to us?

But I think the global economy will understand that the United States has the ability to meet its obligations. But it's not going to be able to do it over the long term if we can't control the growth of government.

The dual effect of high growth creating higher income that's taxed by government at all levels, combined with lessening demands placed on government that occurs during economic prosperity, is a worthy objective.

We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.

It's all right to agree or disagree on the balanced budget amendment. It's all right to talk about how we're going to appropriate.

The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.

Well, I think what we need to remember is that budget deficits can impede economic activity.

We have to deal with two issues. Spending and taxes.

Government is just spending too much money.