Donald Trump Quotes

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities ... We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

I am not disputing the need for this money. What I am disputing and calling attention to is the fact that we are taking the tab for defense in our time against terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere and shoving this tab off onto our children.

It will be sufficient to point to the enormous burdens which armaments place on the economic, social, and intellectual resources of a nation, as well as on its budget and taxes.

Some Democrats say the estimated $60 billion dollar cost of a war with Iraq could be better spent at home. When he heard that, President Bush agreed and announced plans to bomb Ohio.

Spending on the military doesn't increase the deficit.

We have been there for 15 years in the Middle East, and much more than that probably. And we have spent probably $4 trillion, maybe more than that. And it's time to do something about it. And it's time to also knock ISIS out. You got to knock ISIS out.

America has spent as of one month ago $6 trillion in the Middle East. And in our country we can't afford to build a school in Brooklyn or we can't afford to build a school in Los Angeles. And we can't afford to fix up our inner cities. We can't afford to do anything.

I was able to promote a strong defense budget when it could have been cut a lot more severely.

If we can't find cuts in the defense budget, we're not looking carefully enough.

People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people's governments, especially in the Middle East.

Understanding that yes, we are committing more resources than we thought we might be in protecting our homeland and prosecuting a war and so it's understandable that we would be going through a period of deficits.

The Defense Department has a great deal of influence on foreign policy, and State has very little impact on defense policy.

Is it our party's position that Americans are rich enough to police the world but not rich enough to take care of our own?

[The] up-and-down pattern of [defense] spending over the last 18 years averages out to below zero percent real growth. In other words, if defense spending had followed a path of zero percent real growth, the U.S. probably could have obtained more defense for its dollar.

Endless money forms the sinews of war. Nervi belli pecunia infinita.

When the greatest part of the [U.S.] budget pays for our defense and the livelihood of retirees, it is pointless to pretend that public spending is an embarrassment consisting only of welfare and waste.

We are caught in the Middle East in supporting the bad guys in order to get rid of the worse guys.

Base closings [are] the most atrocious waste of money I have ever seen in my life.

It is often easier to assemble armies than it is to assemble army revenues.

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

Foreign policy debates are frequently segregated from domestic policy ones, so commentators who propose increasing the defense budget or sending more foreign aid are seldom asked to explain which domestic programs they’d cut or which taxes they’d raise, in order to find the money.

We've gone too far in thinking we can re-create an American democratic paradise in the Middle East.

Of all government expenditures, defense spending is the... most stimulative to the economy.

The costs of the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now estimated to run as high as $4.4 trillion - a major victory for Osama bin Laden, whose announced goal was to bankrupt America by drawing it into a trap. The 2011 military budget - almost matching that of the rest of the world combined - is higher in real terms than at any time since World War II and is slated to go even higher .

I oppose U.S. military intervention in Iraq. I believe that we should not send troops or engage in air strikes-our nation's military involvement needs to be over. The United States has already spent billions of dollars in Iraq while our nation has endured a crumbling infrastructure, cuts to our social programs, a lack of investment in job training and creation, and sadly, a failure to take care of our veterans. Let's focus our resources at home. Over 4000 men and women have sacrificed their lives for Iraq. That is enough.