Ben Bernanke Quotes

The sky isn't falling. We're not going to have more meteors hit because of sequestration.

The sequestration is a bad idea, all around. It is something that is out of the question. If you have spending cuts, education of our children, other investments, on the National Institutes of Health, where you are hindering growth, you're no going to reduce the deficit.

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.

In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.

You can't balance the budget on the backs of nondefense discretionary spending.

Most people who talk about either entitlement cuts or revenue - when you have to put pen to paper, it is much more difficult.

In times of huge fiscal deficits, no new revenues can be ignored, and renouncing any becomes well nigh politically impossible.

The polls are with us on this. They say the American people, more than anything, want to see spending cuts rather than tax increases.

Republicans must stop putting tax increases on the fiscal cliff negotiating table and start demanding that Democrats put forth serious proposals to reduce spending.

Gentlemen, if we don't cut spending we will be bankrupt. Yes, the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it in order to live. Should we withhold the medicine? No. We are not wrong. We did not seek election and win in order to manage the decline of a great nation.

We have to have structural entitlement reform, major spending cuts and not tax increase-retardants on economic growth to reverse our current course toward national bankruptcy, but Obama steadfastly remains on the wrong side of all these solutions.

There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down the taxes, and in election after election the people vote into power representatives who are as unable as they are unwilling to do anything about it.

I support responsible spending, and balancing the budget, but this tax cut and the budget cuts of last month accomplish neither of these goals.

I don't hear anything from Trump about tax increases. I hear tax cuts from him. I hear tax reform from him.

When George Bush came into office, we had surpluses. And now we have half-a-trillion-dollar deficit annually. When George Bush came into office, our national debt was around $5 trillion. It's now over $10 trillion. We've almost doubled it.

We're in a very Orwellian situation where when we - we've slashed defense. And we've raised taxes. And we consider $600 billion annual deficit success because it's not $1 trillion.

I cannot in good conscience vote in favor of tax cuts, irrespective of their size, or to which segment of the population they are targeted. Nor can I support any spending increases that are not related to improving our nation's defense from the obvious and serious threats facing us today.

What does it mean when Republicans and Democrats alike warn us about the 'pain' involved in cutting government spending - in their spending less of our money? For the average citizen, what pain is there in his keeping more of his money to invest it the way he wants? Taxes cost people. Tax cuts do not cost government.

Now, 'the fiscal cliff' is a name that the media came up with, but some of us have been saying for years, 'You have got to stop the out of control federal spending, or you will end up at this point.' We're there.

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.

It is time to recognize a simple fact of life. Contrary to what some of my colleagues seem to believe, tax cuts do not pay for themselves.

Democracies can't handle austerity measures very well.

The American people elected us here to cut spending so we can create an environment for jobs in America. The House has acted. We have demonstrated that we want to see spending, discretionary spending, brought down to levels of 2008. We've seen no counteraction. We have seen no position that has been expressed by the other side at all.

What is the biggest public forum in the United States? We were told it's the Super Bowl. The ad shows kids working at blue-collar jobs, and the final statement is just written text: Who's going to pay for the trillion dollar deficit?

One of the reasons we don't have our deficit under control is because Republicans are wusses and won't tell their base a simple fact that everyone knows. We can't eliminate the deficit without raising some revenue... They're wusses.