Ronald Reagan Quotes

There's no reason to raise taxes. Taxes should be lower... The problem we have is that government spends too much, not that taxes are too low.

If we increase spending, we have got to raise taxes or any combination.

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

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

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

Washington does not tax too little: it spends way too much.

We sincerely believed that we don't tax too little in Washington. We spend too much.

It is time to recognize a simple fact of life. Contrary to what some of my colleagues seem to believe, tax cuts do not pay for themselves.

Remember that government doesn't earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else.

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.

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

Raising taxes doesn't create jobs, and this is a common sense thing. Washington doesn't get it. They believe if they take more money and send it to Washington, D.C. somehow they create wealth. It doesn't work.

Like Ike [President Eisenhower] did. Talk economy and then spend away.

We want the benefits of government services ranging from security in our old age to the best national defense possible, but we scream when the bill for these services comes due in the form of higher taxes.

Voters want conflicting things. They want a lot of government spending, but they don't want higher taxes.

If the US government spends 40 percent of the nation's income, as it does through either borrowing or taxes, that income is not available for people to spend. The deficit is an indirect method of taxation. Of course, politicians prefer to borrow instead of tax because then someone down the road has to deal with the consequences.

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.

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?

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.

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

Government is just spending too much money.

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

I think I should pay more taxes... but everything they take from me should go to reduce the debt.

I mean, the Obama position has been, 'We think government ought to be spending this money, not the people who earn it.'

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?'