Mark Kirk Quotes

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

The Federal Government has no fiscal policy, for the tail of political expediency has long wagged the dog of prudent policy in Washington.

I am not one of those who believe that we are bound to vote supplies to cover a deficiency in the treasury whenever called on, without investigating the causes which occasioned it.

Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a spending problem. Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a priority problem. It is time that we begin to fine tune our focus and decide what the priority of government ought to be.

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

While our nation faces many challenges that must be met regarding homeland security and our military readiness, it is imperative that we live within our means and wisely spend taxpayer dollars.

States, virtually all of them, have a constitutional requirement to operate on a balanced budget.

Well, I'm going to try to make a real difference in Washington's spending patterns.

The President must stop gambling with taxpayers' money and get the country back on the path of fiscal sanity.

There is no real justification for a requirement that a budget of any sort should be balanced, except as a rallying point for those who seek to hamstring government.

The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled.

If you ask the question of Americans, should we pay our bills? One hundred percent would say yes. There's a significant misunderstanding on the debt ceiling. People think it's authorizing new spending. The debt ceiling doesn't authorize new spending; it allows us to pay obligations already incurred.

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.

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

I am a governor who left office with a smaller general fund budget than when we started.

The budget doesn't have much control over the government. Then again, the government doesn't have much control over the budget.

The people of Illinois sent me to Springfield to end the era of unbalanced budgets and runaway debt.

Government must continue to live within its means.

Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

But I think the global economy will understand that the United States has the ability to meet its obligations. But it's not going to be able to do it over the long term if we can't control the growth of government.

We'll set our approach to borrowing, to spending, to taxation, in a sensible way on a sensible timescale.

In my political career, I'd like to see a constitutional balanced budget amendment.

All the states are required, either by constitution or by statute, to have balanced budgets - they're not able to print money. So they have to focus on establishing priorities.

Keeping a lid on taxes is not just good for the taxpayer. It's a powerful way to force government to be more accountable, set priorities and spend smarter. Let me repeat that: more accountable, set priorities and spend smarter - that's what we need to be about.

Cutting budget deficits can never be just an exercise in economics.