P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
The problem isn't a Congress that won't cut spending or a president who won't raise taxes. The problem is an American public with a bottomless sense of entitlement to federal money.
O'Rourke, P. J. Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991.
Although the Professor was often right about this technique, at the time he made this statement, the Clinton administration was actually cutting spending and using much of the revenue to pay for the deficit—just the opposite of what the Professor was worried about. It was successful and the deficit was eliminated and surpluses were projected. However the succeeding administration more closely followed the professor’s pattern and increased spending enormously for serious needs, but also cut taxes, so that we went during the Bush administration from the largest projected surplus in American history to the greatest deficit in American history.
Patrick Jake O'Rourke is an American political satirist and journalist. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Since 2011, he has been a columnist at The Daily Beast.
