Rick Tumlinson Quotes

Cost effectiveness and effectiveness are not always the same thing in government.

Save the taxpayer's money by canceling the Ares 1 and V.

There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further.

Humans can actually read a landscape, go through a lot of rocks - crack them open, throw them, pick up the next one. Rovers are great - they do amazing science - but it is a lot more tedious process; they go much less far than a human can cover in a day.

The exploration of space: Be it by humans or robots, based on the best choice for the mission and the most efficient means to return the data and science sought. Most of the time, this will mean we send robots due to cost and danger. But sometimes, we will need the irreplaceable judgment and descriptive abilities of a person on the spot.

We have to be plumbers, electricians, construction engineers, or workers, on the space station, but at the same time running a laboratory, being scientists, being the best laboratory assistants we can be. It's all in a bundle; it's very exciting, it's a lot of fun.

Before we give you billions more, we want to know what you've done with the trillion you've got.

I believe the only measure of government response shouldn't be how much we spend on a situation, but rather how well we spend.

The practical case for manned spacef light gets ever-weaker with each advance in robots and miniaturisation - indeed, as a scientist or practical man, I see little purpose in sending people into space at all. But as a human being, I'm an enthusiast for manned missions.

As a producer or financier, you are going to go where you get the best bang for your buck.

I don't mind the government accruing debts as long as every dollar is spent effectively with a high return. That works out fine. If you accumulate debts and waste your money, that's, of course, a disaster.

Tell me why the limousine fleet has increased by 42 percent since Barack Obama took office. Why are we spending taxpayers' money on that? Limos should be for weddings and proms, certainly not for government officials to be riding around in.

I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.

It's a terribly hard job to spend a billion dollars and get your money's worth.

If you could really guarantee that the money would be spent on something more worthwhile, I'd say, absolutely, scrap the space program, but it never works that way.

Now in business we do a cost benefit analysis before we make policy changes. Washington should as well.

Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.

It's wrong that members of Congress can purchase luxury airfare with taxpayer money when many families in my district and across the county are struggling to make ends meet.

A most powerful objection always arises to propositions of public works. It is that public undertakings are carelessly managed and much money spent to little purpose

It is a terribly hard job to spend a billion dollars and get your money's worth.

Tell Congress to go home and make an honest living instead of riding on the backs of the taxpayers.

The United States is spending $6 billion a year and deserves to get a lot more than it is getting.

If it doesn’t make economic sense, it doesn’t happen

Why spend billions on a super collider, when we already have John Sununu?

I'm gonna watch the taxpayers' money like I was elected to do.