Chuka Umunna Quotes

But I think the global economy will understand that the United States has the ability to meet its obligations. But it's not going to be able to do it over the long term if we can't control the growth of government.

We have to reduce the burden placed on our economy by years of deficits and debt.

We agree with Simpson and Bowles and others who have looked at this. What's necessary is to stabilize the debt and then work from there. You can't balance the budget in the short term because to do that would be to ratchet down the economy.

It's insane to try to balance the budget.

I think where I differ a little bit, we absolutely have to think about the deficit looking down the road. And certainly that's something the president has said that we need to, as the economy recovers, have a plan in place for getting it down.

Monetary discipline forces fiscal discipline on the politicians as well.

We had a $10 billion budget deficit when we got here in January of 2003. We cut that budget deficit; we did not raise taxes; we came back in '05, and we had an $8 billion surplus. That's how fast it can happen.

We have a spending problem, not a taxing problem. The less we spend, the more jobs we have the potential to create.

Without deficit reduction, we cannot have sustained economic growth.

The first order of business is the elimination of the annual deficit.

Fiscal discipline can turn the economy around.

I am prepared to discuss the things that I believe we need to do not just to raise the debt limit. Raising the debt limit is the easiest thing. That's one vote away. The hard thing is to show the world we are serious about putting our spending in order so we can show people we'll able to pay our bills down the road.

As a Main Street businessman, I believe we need to reduce runaway federal spending and address our national debt and the MAP Act provides Congress with the tools to accomplish this goal.

It is important for India to stay the course on fiscal consolidation.

Not in the constitution, but I would propose a law to the French parliament that provides for reducing the budget deficit year by year, until we have reached a balanced budget by 2017.

The budget enforcement rules of the 1990s were an important part of getting the budget back into balance. It was done on a bipartisan basis. Those pay-as-you-go rules were tested and they worked. We are now in a one-party system, and we have thrown them out.

The Tea Party knows that continuing to delay charting a course to spending reform hurts everybody.

We are worried about the size of the deficit, which is why the president is pleased that the House and Senate have followed his lead in cutting the deficit in half over the next five years.

As the President reviewed the state of the union and unveiled his second-term agenda, he fell short of adequately explaining how he intends to set America back on the course of fiscal responsibility and secure the fiscal health of the nation.

No one in the modern history of this country, no president, has done more to move toward a balanced budget than has President Bill Clinton.

Make no mistake: I will work with both Democrats and Republicans to cut wasteful spending and reduce our debt in a balanced, responsible way.

Defense spending as a share of the economy dropped significantly during the early 1990s, and that was one of the things, along with other policy changes, that put us back on the path to a balanced budget.

I was the chairman of the House Budget Committee and one of the chief architects the last time we balanced a budget, and it was the first time we had done it since man walked on the moon. We had a $5 trillion surplus and we cut taxes.

Reducing debt through budgetary consolidation is essential to restoring Europe's financial health.

Without a doubt, first thing we should do is clean up our fiscal house, and that starts with balancing our budgets and digging out of this red ink. We cannot expect to continue in this fashion and remain the leader of the free world.