Charles Vest Quotes

Every government program needs to be more efficient. Instead of pointing out how other programs can tighten their belts, every program administrator must look inward to save money.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

There shouldn't be budget problems. There is so much money that goes untapped. If every athlete gave 5% of what they earned, there wouldn't be any budget problems.

All of us are going to have to find ways to do things more efficiently, find ways to get our costs more in line, and do it in a time of higher regulatory and environmental standards.

We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.

Heavy lifting doesn't need to be heavy spending if we do the job right.

I think we should be looking at the defense and seeing where we can actually be more efficient because I think that, you know, sometimes during the contracting process, we lose some efficiencies in that regard.

When I became director of CIA, it was just clear to me intuitively, without a whole lot of science behind it, that we had expanded rapidly and inefficiently. So I arbitrarily picked a number, 10 percent, and I said over the next 12 months, we are going to reduce our reliance on contractors by 10 percent.

Profitability is coming from productivity, efficiency, management, austerity, and the way to manage the business.

I went through all my electric bills, the water bills, the phone bills, elevator contracts, and I found enough wasteful spending without reducing any programs anywhere, without reducing any services, I found enough wasteful spending to pay my entire salary for three years.

Business people do two things with their time fundamentally. The first is that they try to create sales, right? Revenue, key to business. But the other thing they devote their time to equally is cost containment. That is to say, how to not create jobs. Because the fewer jobs you can create for the revenue you create, the more profit you make.

Budgets are blueprints and priorities.

At a time when we're having to take such difficult decisions about how to cut back without damaging the things that matter the most, we should strain every sinew to cut error, waste and fraud.

Our struggle is to identify the sources of revenue and the means to obtain the funds. Without funds, all the planning and research studies can't help us.

The new rule of thumb is that 80% of a president's time must be spent in raising funds for their schools.

Our biggest single theme is trying to make the NIH work better with the same amount of money.

I got to get the right people in the right job. Because a lot of costs can be taken out in the context of your administration without the legislature. For example, using technology to do more with less. Using technology to fight fraud. Reorganizing and streamlining can be done within the context of the administration.

The only way to make budget cuts is to bring down force structure.

Show me your budget and I’ll describe your strategy.

One of the ways I think you make more money is by creating more efficiency.

It is time to cut out the mountains of waste and inefficiency and duplication in the federal government.

Moving to one show each season will significantly help to simplify many aspects of our business. Maintaining two separate, disconnected calendars has been a result of tradition rather than practicality.

As a CEO, you have to take the active action to force most of your resources to stand idle from time to time - or go bankrupt.

The first thing I control is the cost by not shooting for many days. It is not control, but somebody has to drive the whole thing. If I shoot unnecessary things, it will raise cost.

The first set of questions to ask yourself when you're doing cost cutting is relatively straightforward, which is, you know, can you use the necessity of cost cutting as an opportunity to do pruning or trimming for projects that aren't being as successful? But, you know, frequently those are the easy ones. I mean, there's always some kind of social costs internal to the company, but that's the easy way of looking at the future.