Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

Most Americans recognize that whatever the government program is, no matter how essential it is, it's waste.

I don't know when network executives will get out of the Dark Ages.

Trillion-dollar bailouts, bloated budgets, and boondoggle spending packages aren't working, at least for my friends and neighbors.

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.

Every American knows there are government expenses that are absolutely not necessary. I disagree with the very idea that our government is spending $2.4 trillion in the most efficient manner.

I firmly believe that the best way to stimulate our economy and create jobs is to let hard-working Americans keep more of their money - after all, the money belongs to them, not to Washington.

It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.

I would cap the amount of federal government can spend at 20 percent of the economy. Bring it back to 20 percent or lower. And say, we are not going to spend above that level. Democrats, they want to raise your taxes and spend more and more and turn us into an economy which is no longer driven by the private sector.

How in heaven's name can a nation with a $1 trillion surplus threaten so much scientific research so vital to its future?

We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven't invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us.

I'd be a lot more excited about eliminating earmarks if we reduced all of the spending by whatever the earmarks used to be, but nobody's, apparently, going to talk about doing that.

Frankly, earmarking is not the problem. It is a symptom of the problem.

This country pays a price whenever our economy fails to deliver rising living standards to our citizens - which is exactly what has been the case for years now. We pay a price when our political system cannot come together and agree on the difficult but necessary steps to rein in entitlement spending or reform our tax system.

There are as many Democrats that are guilty as Republicans and their spending habits. And the fact is, is that Washington is just broken.

But if they want to really think about the fiscal future of this country, then think about how we have moved from hundreds of billions of surpluses to hundreds of billions of deficits.

Instead of cutting waste, the Obama Administration is hurting workers. President Obama should stop protecting wasteful government spending.

One of the things the government can't do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.

Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.

When they call the slightest spending reductions 'painful', we will say 'If government spending prevents pain, why are we suffering so much of it?' And 'If you want to experience real pain, just stay on the track we are on.'

Big government doesn't work! It just doesn't work!

Staff expands to fill the office space available.... The basic obligation of Congress is to the tax payers, not to its own creature comforts.

Government is too slow to keep up with the digital environment.

Government does not have basic business sense.

What begins in Washington as simple, garden-variety grasping becomes an entitlement, the argument being that the longer the benefit has lived, the more the beneficiaries have built their lives around it, so ending it would be disruptive.

The Pentagon is the Poster Child for waste in Government.