Earl Blumenauer Quotes

We have sent our troops to war without paying for it. Now, we are bringing them home without saying how we are paying for it.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

What we are effectively doing, I say this to the young people of America whom my colleagues represent, is leaving our children and grandchildren the tab for fighting a war, letting them pay for the lion's share of it by simply adding it to the national debt.

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

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

I think cutting our defense capacity not only demonstrably diminishes our national security, but it has a tremendous negative impact in the long run on our economy because we end up having to fight wars and clean up after terrorist disasters.

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.

Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

I know that my Republican colleagues are as ashamed as I am that the United States is forced to borrow over $1 trillion from foreign nations to pay for our national priorities like reconstruction of the gulf coast and the war in Iraq.

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

Wars are made to make debt.

A devastating commentary on the war in Iraq is that we have been unable to spend money on infrastructure.

There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.

I have absolutely no regret about my vote against this war. The same questions remain. The cost in human lives, the cost to our budget, probably 100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less.

We are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq.

These kids understood what is not immediately obvious; that they were going to pay the bills for tax cuts that had been passed today or in the last 4 years, and for the war in Iraq, because essentially we are borrowing money to do those things.

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

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.

The expenses of war are a moral check, which it has pleased the Almighty to impose upon the ambition and lust of conquest that are inherent in so many nations.

We were lied into both wars in every aspect - the reasons for going in, the prospects, the length, the scale and the probable costs in lives and dollars

The cost of war is hard to count.

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

Borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar we spend for missiles or food stamps is unsustainable. And being indebted for generations to China and OPEC does not make American a stronger nation.

The budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs the total impact will exceed £20 billion.

The national debt will have increased by approximately 50% in just eight years! We will have created a new unfunded entitlement - disability and health care benefits for the huge number of disabled veterans returning from the Iraq war.