Jan Jones Quotes

Spending a few hundred million dollars more a year on evaluations could save tens of billions of dollars by teaching us which programs work and generating lessons to improve programs that don’t

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

We have a responsibility to make sure that the limited resources we have are spent efficiently and effectively and that programs achieve their mission.

Why should a city be mandated to do something by the federal government or state government without the money to do it?

Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.

Every government program needs to be more efficient. Instead of pointing out how other programs can tighten their belts, every program administrator must look inward to save money.

When I was director of the CIA, I knew that we had been - and I'm choosing my words very carefully here - effective in our expansion. We really had - expansion of government agencies and expansion of use of contractors. Effective, we were; efficient, we weren't. And so, as director of the CIA, I went after the inefficiencies part.

If the rest of Washington ran as efficiently as this football team there wouldn't be any deficit.

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

Economy in government does not mean spending little ... It means spending what you have and spending it well.

Governments are not like a business. They don’t look like a business, work like a business, think like a business, and they don’t have a bottom line.

If you are the mayor of a city, one of the things you do is to try and gouge as much money out of the Federal Government as you can. That is your job.

No altered system will work a miracle. Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of our proven system

If you don’t have the budget, you can’t get anything done. That’s why bureaucrats are always fighting about budgets.

For too long the federal government has measured quantity, not quality: What it puts in rather than what it gets out.

Prioritizing spending and maximizing the effectiveness of taxpayer dollars is absolutely essential. We must draw the line, realigning programs when necessary and also eliminating failed programs.

There is no reason why government should not be as efficient as any good business.

We ought to prioritize national disasters... in a fiscally responsible way.

For too long it was assumed that you could completely separate out flows of money from responsibilities and accountabilities in service delivery. This flawed assumption is central to understanding many of the failures.

This is a business that is much easier planned than executed.

I do not think we can get any legislation this session for extension of land grants unless we pay more for it than it is worth.

Nations in general, even under governments of the more popular kind, usually commit the administration of their finances to single men or to boards composed of a few individuals, who digest and prepare, in the first instance, the plans of taxation, which are afterwards passed into laws by the authority of the sovereign or legislature.

Government does not have basic business sense.

The report of the Post Master General presents a gratifying picture of the condition of the Post Office Department…. The Department has been redeemed from embarrassment and debt, has accumulated a surplus exceeding half a million dollars, has largely extended and is preparing still further to extend the mail service, and recommends a reduction of postages equal to about 20%.

Getting the U. S. Government to do anything is like herding ducks with a broom.