Robert Morris Quotes

Well, where is the money? Show me the money? Our allies have put up a few billion dollars, but the American taxpayer has been required to shoulder the burden of this war.

I am not disputing the need for this money. What I am disputing and calling attention to is the fact that we are taking the tab for defense in our time against terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere and shoving this tab off onto our children.

For the first time in history, we declared war without financing it. Americans have not been asked to pay for it through taxes.

Americans know that war must be paid for and it is they who must pay for it.

War costs money. That means taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes. It means cutting luxuries and other non essentials.

The cost of war is hard to count.

Wars cost money.

Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.

… war is a matter not so much of arms as of money

Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.

There's a financial cost, but the only costs that are ever real are the costs of our soldiers.

Today, the US spends less on defense as a percentage of our economy than we did at any time since he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the world's only superpower, that is an invitation to very serious trouble.

We are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq.

Our guns are not called upon to hurl huge projectiles each one of which costs as much as the construction of a happy home.

The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.

I want you all to understand that we are at war and we will stay as war until this is done. Nothing else matters. Everything is available for the pursuit of this war. Any barriers in your way, they’re gone. Any money you need, you have it. This is our only agenda.

[The] up-and-down pattern of [defense] spending over the last 18 years averages out to below zero percent real growth. In other words, if defense spending had followed a path of zero percent real growth, the U.S. probably could have obtained more defense for its dollar.

France has imposed upon herself an average of more than 2 billion francs a year. This is the minimum price of armed peace for one country only …. Think what United Europe might have done with these millions, had she consecrated even half to the service of progress.

If anything could revolt our citizens against the war, it would be the extravagance with which they are about to be taxed ….

… a degeneracy of representation in the great council of America .… Many members of it are no doubt men in every respect, fit for the trust, but this cannot be said of it as a body. Folly, caprice a want of foresight, comprehension and dignity, characterize the general tenor of their actions…. Their conduct with respect to the army especially is feeble indecisive and improvident

There are no straight line projections of cost in a war.

We go on in Congress as when you left us …. Resolves have been passed upon Resolves--and letter after letter has been sent to the deficient States, and all without the desired effect. We are without money or the prospect of it in the Federal Treasury; and the States, many of them, care so little about the Union, that they take no measures to keep a representation in Congress.

Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion! Now, wealthy individuals won't pay. They've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay. They'll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W. Well then, who will pay? School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind -- way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war. Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.

The war is going to end because we're gonna have such a political and financial havoc here with the devaluation of our dollar, because we just can't keep affording it. This is usually how empires end, by spending too much money maintaining their empire. We're in 130 countries, we have 700 bases around the world, and it's going to come to an end. I want it to come to an end more gracefully and peacefully, follow the constitution, and follow a more sensible foreign policy.

It is not how much you spend on defense as much as how you spend it.