Lawton M. Chiles Jr. Quotes

The only way to meet the situation [the financial crisis] is spend less money and to run the City of New York within the limits of our resources. Unless you do this, gentlemen, you will have a difficult problem confronting you by the end of this year and the taxpayers of 1922 and the years thereafter will have to pay the price of our present lack of prudence or our unwillingness to economize at the proper time.

Like working families all across the state, we must find a way to make government live within its means.

Let us have the courage to stop borrowing to meet continuing deficits. Revenues must cover expenditures by one means or another. Any government, like any family, can, for a year, spend a little more than it earns. But you know and I know that a continuation of the habit means the poor house.

Britain can only spend what it can afford.

It's time to stop spending money we don't have and balance the budget.

We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in.

The cold harsh reality is that we have to balance the budget.

Monetary discipline forces fiscal discipline on the politicians as well.

I have voted to make tough decisions in budgetary times, I've served on two recessionary budgets, my opponent has never served on any a budget committee where there was less money to spend than the year before.

A long term tax cut is not a tax cut at all unless it is accompanied by a spending cut.

The best thing to hold down spending is to have a Democratic President and a Republican Congress.

Our system of keeping the federal government's books is a monument to the creativity of mankind ... We've cut government spending for 15 years in a row, and yet have spent more money in each of those years.

I want the government to pinch pennies for a change instead of American families.

Balancing the budget is like going to Heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there.

Like Ike [President Eisenhower] did. Talk economy and then spend away.

Let us act with our eyes open. We are going to have a deficit next fiscal year and the year after that.

What would be better is to discipline our lawmakers in Sacramento so that they do not spend more money than they have.

Washington has to stop spending money we don’t have for projects we don’t want.

The era of deficit denial is over

The revenue you take in should be enough to cover the revenue that you spend and go beyond that to get a reserve. In order to do that we [in California] need cuts and pension reforms, and taxes.

Austerity [in the Defense Department] meant that risks had to be managed, not eliminated.

In my view, the biggest challenge facing this country is that we are not living within our means. Spending cuts can only get us halfway there.

Some states like Nebraska have thus far responsibly managed their budgets, even in tough times, and I could not ask Nebraskans to pay for poor governance elsewhere.

I've been a conservative when it comes to budgeting issues and streamlining government.

In the private sector we budget for rainy days or offset unexpected expenditures with spending cuts and the same principles should apply to Congress.