Lewis Black Quotes

Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.

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 most effective thing we can do is to limit spending.

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

If you don't get spending under control, eventually you're going to have a big tax increase.

Austerity [in the Defense Department] meant that risks had to be managed, not eliminated.

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

Fiscal prudence is very important.

Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.

People know that you can't spend more than you have.

Every family in America knows they have to do a budget. Every small business in America knows they have to do a budget. Every local government, every state, knows they have to do a budget.

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.

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

Can there not be a limit to the fact that really you need to cut your cloth in accordance with what capabilities and finances you have?

Adhering to budgeting rules shouldn't trump good decision-making.

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

I've actually cut my personal pay individually; we didn't vote on that, but I've done that individually. It's important that folks know that we're going to roll up our sleeves and work on things, and members of Congress are going to sacrifice our own budgets first.

Any sensible family has a budget that lays out how much will be spent for household and other purposes. Without such planning, things would quickly go awry.

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

A billion saved is a billion earned.

There are two ways to reduce expenditures. There is the intelligent way ... going through each department and questioning each program. Then there is the stupid way: announcing how much you will cut and getting each department to cut that amount. I favor the stupid way.

You may think my business is to make appropriations, but it is not. It is to prevent their being made.

A budget in difficult times can and must serve the people for whom it is designed.

At a time of tight budgets, unless something is really broken and not working, they [his congressional colleagues] just don't get excited about it.

There must be some flexibility in the budget. You cannot have too much discipline.