Giuseppe Conte Quotes

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

The truth was you can't continue to spend the kind of money our spending on all these entitlement programs. I think we need more people in public life who are willing to say, no, we can't afford certain things. No, we can't do certain things.

What I'd like to do is be able to work with Democrats to reform current entitlement programs for future generations, grandfathering all the grandparents.

We can't reform mandatory spending in this area until we first deal with ours. I tell my colleagues, 'Let's get the moral high ground and demonstrate that we want to make changes to our pension, and then we can deal with the big problems.'

We should stop having a conversation about cutting Social Security a little bit or a lot.

Government pensions are among the largest cost drivers for state and local governments.

Social Security has not contributed to the deficit problem.

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

But I will say, I think there are some Democrats that don't want to address pension reform. I have taken on the issue of seniority and tenure. I think we have to address entitlements and the president has done that in his budget. I think we have to extend Medicare and the president has done that. But also reinvest in that program.

Because Social Security has not contributed to our debt, Americans should be skeptical of any politician who says that benefits Americans have earned must be reduced in order to address our national debt.

The mentality in Washington is, 'Look what our government - what our government can do for the American people.' We've got to get away from that mentality, and realize it's too expensive. We can't afford it.

Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.

When you have a country that's been accustomed to government spending at a certain level, it is really hard to ratchet it back.

When public spending in the form of transfer payments makes various services and benefits free of charge, work is discouraged. Yet it is precisely Social Security that legislators fear to cut.

I don't disagree with ending Congress' retirement program. I'm a governor; I don't have a retirement program in my state, and I don't disagree with that.

The national debate on Social Security has been cheapened by demagoguery on all sides.

The privatization plan weakens Social Security and threatens our economic security by creating trillions of dollars in new debt.

Social Security and Medicare are necessary safety nets, but they are nearing insolvency as fewer pay in, more take out, and more take out more.

Public employee unions, in their defense, say politicians have unfairly made them into simplistic bogeymen, responsible for problems that have myriad causes. Not all government workers receive generous pensions, they note.

I'm gonna keep Social Security without change, except I'm going to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse; same thing with Medicare.

Yes, I introduced the congressional pay cut bill, cutting our salaries by five percent. And I think we have to lead by example.

Government spending clearly needs some adjusting. But a budget is a statement of our priorities, and balancing our spending on the backs of our nation's seniors is not the right approach.

The goal is to reduce the size and scope of government spending, not to focus on the deficit. The deficit is the symptom of the disease.

I am going to give the American people a huge helping of unbridled truth: that we can't continue to spend what we are spending, that we can't avoid entitlement reform because we are afraid of third rail politics.

I've never seen a constructive Social Security debate that started with one side digging in, in one place and another side digging into another.