Robert Walpole Quotes

From now on, the government has to make its accounts public on a quarterly basis.

My conviction of the necessity of further legislative provisions for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public moneys and my opinion in regard to the measures best adapted to the accomplishment of those objects have been already submitted to you.

In many cases, here we are, putting out reports that we're spending $100 million a year on, and we're telling the public, 'Oh, you don't have access to them.'

The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill. If we are to have a billion dollars of navy, half a billion of farm relief, etc... the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes. It is for them, through their Congress, to decide how far they wish to go.

I firmly believe that the most important feature of spending the people's money is complete transparency.

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of public moneys.

May the debt of the United States be discharged with speed and punctuality; and let not the people be deceived, by having the funds, established for that purpose, put to other uses.

The Pentagon says that they are too big to be audited. That’s an insult. They spend $700 billion a year. They need to be audited.

Every public official concerned with administering public funds owes it to all our citizens to be prepared at any time to account to the last penny of the public money placed in his hands.

I don't think the press has done a very good job dealing with government spending.The Defense Department with the $9,500 toilet seat, that's not the problem anymore. Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are the problem. That's us. That's our generation. There the press never says a word.

Where did all the money go? The Aam Aadmi wants to know.

I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40 percent of our national income.

No honest hardworking official likes to see good money disappearing into the hands of the Treasury at the end of the financial year.

We're very focused in on outcomes for government with respect to the amount of tax that goes in and the amount of expenditures that go out.

It is very difficult to spend "federal (the taxpayers') dollars" so that the intended result is achieved.

Before we give the government any more money, show us some receipts.

Do you know that all of the money that we are spending, that the government is spending, must come from you? The government has no great pile of gold to which it can go to get what it gives you. The government has not one cent that it does not take from your pockets. Do not imagine, do not believe, do not go on the theory that you are not to pay this bill, unless the fundamentals of our government are to be overturned.

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.

People are not really interested in what politicians talk about, but what they are really interested in is how their hard-earned tax money is spent.

Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.

Every time we spend a federal dollar, what we're doing is we're pulling money out of somebody's pocket, and we're giving it to somebody else.

I am not wrong in the belief that its public funds are more secure than those of all the European powers.

Unlike despotisms, modern democracies are not supposed promiscuously to accumulate property and then charge their taxpayers to maintain it. But that is what they do. Governments are always trying to extend their responsibilities and their estates, and it is very hard for parliaments to reign them in.

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

Politicians like to confuse congressional spending with earmarks. There is a difference.