Tim Pawlenty Quotes

Regardless of my legislation, spending has to be stopped.

We're failing when it comes to controlling spending.

When I was speaker in North Carolina, the state was gripped with a deficit, and we made a fundamental policy decision to adopt austerity budgets for four years.

I think to balance the budget, probably every federal department has to take cuts in my opinion.

What you don't do, if you're an adult, is decide that you're going to budget things through a sequester. What does that word have to do with budgeting? It's like if you have a family budget and go, 'We really don't know what to take out economically from the budget, so we're going to whack out protein for this week.'

We must take away the government's credit card. With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts.

I'm not a detail guy. I depend on accountants and administrators to do my detail stuff for me, but I do know the overall picture and I know that if you put business people together in a room, not just politicians, they could shrink the deficit tremendously by good business tactics.

Normally, when politicians talk about 'cutting the budget,' they really mean reducing the amount of increase. Actual spending goes up while the politicians claim to have 'cut the budget.'

I want to cut - personally, I want to cut spending. Personally, I just don't believe we can continue to add to the deficit. So, actually, personally, I like the budget cap.

We can't continue to spend where there isn't any money.

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.

The deficit had become a symbol of our inability to control and manage the cost of government.

Sometimes you have to make tough decisions to hold the line on spending.

We are going to have to make some very difficult choices, because state government cannot continue to spend more than it takes in.

We've got to take some drastic steps in this country. We can't keep spending and spending.

You know, even people who talk about cutting spending and they go 'That's not the spending that I was actually talking about that you're supposed to be cutting.' Well, we have to be looking across the board.

Of course we have to address the deficit if we win.

The American people are tired of the out-of-control spending, and they want Washington to get their act in order and stop spending money we don't have.

No one cuts backs like he did. No one knows what a back is anymore.

I came to Congress to help reduce spending.

The only way you can raise the debt ceiling is to change the trajectory of spending - that's my personal preference. But I want the Ways and Means Committee to offer up a solution.

We're going to have to control the spending of government.

We do not have a revenue problem in D.C. or this county. We have a prioritization problem. When you create the priorities you fund the priorities of the country and you stop spending money when you get to zero.

Every video I do is over budget by the time I walk on set. I am massively extravagant in my personal habits.

Under President Obama, we have spent more money - he has spent more money than any other president in this history, actually, the combined total from Washington up to George W. Bush. President Obama has racked up more spending, $1 trillion deficits. And it's time that he join us in this effort to get our fiscal house in order.