Amity Shlaes Quotes

I think to balance the budget, probably every federal department has to take cuts in my opinion.

Today I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office.

You know, even people who talk about cutting spending and they go 'That's not the spending that I was actually talking about that you're supposed to be cutting.' Well, we have to be looking across the board.

Any Government, like any family, can for a year spend a little more than it earns. But you and I know that a continuation of that habit means the poorhouse.

If the economy is strained, then Social Security, like the rest of the government, will be, too.

I think growing an economy is a good way to help with a deficit, but ultimately, it's about fiscal discipline and responsible spending - and smart decisions.

We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy. The left wants to focus on the deficit so they can take us away from the focus on spending as a percentage of the economy.

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.

Of course we have to address the deficit if we win.

I have said, with respect to authorization bills, that I do not want the Congress or the country to commit fiscal suicide on the installment plan.

People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can't live within its income.

I have spoken about deficits, and I think deficits are important because they address broad economic and financial stability. We need to talk about that.

I came to Congress to help reduce spending.

We're going to have to control the spending of government.

Sequestration was not designed to be anyone's ideal method for getting our hands around government spending, and it certainly isn't mine.

There is a very serious fiscal-policy question of, 'Are we running our overall fiscal policy such that we as a government can pay our bills?'

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.

Our priority must be to build a path towards balancing the budget, and we cannot tolerate growing deficits.

Under President Obama, we have spent more money - he has spent more money than any other president in this history, actually, the combined total from Washington up to George W. Bush. President Obama has racked up more spending, $1 trillion deficits. And it's time that he join us in this effort to get our fiscal house in order.

When you have a country that's been accustomed to government spending at a certain level, it is really hard to ratchet it back.

When the economy is growing, there's a lot that can be done to deal with the deficit.

To reduce deficit spending and our enormous debt, you reign in spending. You cut the budget. You don't take more from the private sector and grow government with it. And that's exactly what Obama has in mind with this expiration of Bush tax cuts proposal of his.

If you don't get spending under control, eventually you're going to have a big tax increase.

In order to reduce the deficit, there has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

The most remarkable thing about Calvin Coolidge is that he served for 67 months, and when he left office, the budget was lower than he came in. In real terms - in nominal terms with vanilla on top - he cut the budget year over year.