Herbert Hoover Quotes

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth

The party in power almost always unapologetically engages in deficit spending, while the other party argues passionately against the evils of debt and deficits.

Government is just spending too much money.

The financial crisis should not become an excuse to raise taxes, which would only undermine the economic growth required to regain our strength.

Inflation is taxation without legislation.

I am pretty sure central banks will continue to print money, and the standards of living for people in the western world, not just in America, will continue to decline because the cost of living increases will exceed income. The cost of living will also go up because all kinds of taxes will increase.

Raising taxes in an economic downturn is not a good idea.

In a great financial emergency nearly every country has, at one time or another, been tempted to confuse the monetary with the fiscal functions of the Treasury. To borrow by the issue of money seems to have a seductive charm hard to resist.

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

A dynamic economy, with more citizens working and paying taxes, will be our strongest tool to bring down budget deficits

In the 1860s we used the national debt to save the Union. In the 1930s we used it to save the American economy. In the 1940s we used it to save the world.

Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretend payment.

While deficits are often inflationary and always pernicious, curing them by raising taxes is equivalent to curing an illness by shooting the patient.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

The difficulty for Mr. Obama will be when the public sees where his decisions lead - higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, sluggish growth, and a jobless recovery.

It's the old Washington fiscal game of Jenga. You try to build as much debt as you can take, as much tax as you can take, until you topple the entire economy.

The President and the Democrats on Congress have exploited the financial crisis to advance their socialist big government tax, spend and borrow agenda.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.

Governments can inflate their way out of debt, but that has consequences, doesn't it?

Trillions of dollars are being spent in the name of 'saving' the economy: bailouts, 'stimulus,' omnibus spending bills, budgets, government takeovers of the auto, health care and energy industries, all of which require ever more spending.

It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

In a normal time, I don't think economic policy makes a large difference one way or another. But in times of crisis it makes all the difference in the world.

We've got to start worrying about America. And if we don't start dealing with the debt we have and the deficit spending we have in Washington, politics doesn't matter, because the American people do realize that they have to balance their budgets.