Leroy Collins Quotes

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.

A national debt is the price of liberty.

Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we've got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.

Defaulting on our [national] debt is defaulting on America.

I fully believe that the U.S. has the obligation to honor its debt.

So you know, everyone points out Greece's default record, but the history of a lot of sovereign nations is not a good one when it comes to lending them money.

One needs a comprehensive concept that decides just how much debt states like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy can sustainably bear.

After everyone has had a chance to bluster, posture, and pontificate, we are left with one basic question: under any foreseeable circumstance, would it be in our national interest to default on our debt? The answer is unequivocally no.

The debt ceiling at some point has to be raised. I don't think there's anybody that questions the fact that if we ended up getting in a situation where the U.S. government was sending out IOUs like the state of California did at one point, that ends up creating quite a brand problem for our country.

Government bonds have basically been sold in the domestic market, so there is some sense of stability, but the amount of public debt is really severe... Japan must manage its finances with a sense of urgency.

I think we ought to all take a step back and remember where we were 24, 48 hours ago, a week ago, two weeks ago - the prospect that was hanging out there that America would not honor its obligations for the first time in its history, and the impact that would have on our economy and the global economy.

I certainly don't want our nation to go into default, but at the same time, I'm very concerned about our ongoing debt problem.

To protect the national honor, every dollar of Government indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract. Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far toward strengthening a credit which ought to be the best in the world.

Nineteen years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation nor even the whole nation itself assembled can validly extend a debt ... one generation is to another as one independent nation to another.

A nation is not in danger of financial disaster merely because it owes itself money.

If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.

The debt ceiling is not something to toy with.

The federal government is enormous; it never shrinks. And the interest is killing us.

The interest on our debt is going to collapse this country.

Not raising the debt ceiling is not an automatic trigger for a default.

I firmly believe that the U.S. has to honor its debt.

It took the first 204 years of our Nation's history to accumulate $1 trillion in debt. And now we are doing that every 2 or 3 years.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.

The tenor of the comments as we got closer and closer to August got dominated by 'Wouldja please get this over with' and not let us go into default.