Ronald Reagan Quotes

If the US government spends 40 percent of the nation's income, as it does through either borrowing or taxes, that income is not available for people to spend. The deficit is an indirect method of taxation. Of course, politicians prefer to borrow instead of tax because then someone down the road has to deal with the consequences.

Stay on the path that the Democratic Party has us on, we're going to be in a mountain range of debt.

The problem with our deficit is not because Americans are taxed too little. The problem with the deficit is because Washington spends too much money. We have got to stop spending money we don't have.

It is day after day in this institution, borrow money, run up the debt, run up the deficits and then with a straight face say, we are going to repeal a tax that affects 1 percent of the American people, just 1 percent of the American people.

When George W. Bush entered office, the national debt was $5 trillion. When he left, it was $10 trillion. I think the administration spent too much money.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

As we all know, the budget decisions which give rise to increased debt are what counts, and the debt is just a by-product of those budget decisions.

A national debt is the price of liberty.

Between debt and taxes Americans had usually chosen debt.

Washington does not tax too little: it spends way too much.

The American people care about the fact that we have $17 trillion in debt and 10 percent of every tax dollar that's coming in is going to pay for past overspending.

The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.

I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].

The greatest threat to our national security is our debt. We borrow a million dollars a minute.

A national debt if it is not excessive will be to us a national blessing; it will be powerfull cement of our union. It will also create a necessity for keeping up taxation to a degree which without being oppressive, will be a spur to industry.

The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.

President Obama inherited a one trillion dollar deficit courtesy of George Bush and turned it into a three trillion dollar deficit courtesy of Karl Marx!

I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits. I inherited a trillion-dollar deficit. ... This notion that somehow we caused the deficits is just wrong. It's just not true. ... If they start trying to give you a bunch of facts and figures suggesting that it's true, what they're not telling you is they baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts and a prescription drug plan that they didn't pay for and the wars.

It's the [George Bush] president's fiscal policies that have driven up the biggest deficits in American history. He's added more debt to the debt of the United States in four years than all the way from George Washington to Ronald Reagan put together.

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 go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.

There are respectable individuals, who from a just aversion to an accumulation of Public debt, are unwilling to concede to it any kind of utility, who can discern no good to alleviate the ill with which they suppose it pregnant; who cannot be persuaded that it ought in any sense to be viewed as an increase of capital lest it should be inferred, that the more debt the more capital, the greater the burthens the greater the blessings of the community.

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.

I have proposed I would not add a penny to the debt and [Donald Trump] plans would add $5 trillion to the debt.