Robert Reich Quotes

Funded by the government just means funded by the people. Government, by the way, has no money. It only takes money from the people. Sometimes people forget that that's really what occurs.

Do you realize that $150 billion of our tax money is given to the corporations, unions and wealthy people for tax breaks, special subsidies and special regulations? That money would be available for health and education and building bridges.

Do you know that all of the money that we are spending, that the government is spending, must come from you? The government has no great pile of gold to which it can go to get what it gives you. The government has not one cent that it does not take from your pockets. Do not imagine, do not believe, do not go on the theory that you are not to pay this bill, unless the fundamentals of our government are to be overturned.

The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill. If we are to have a billion dollars of navy, half a billion of farm relief, etc... the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes. It is for them, through their Congress, to decide how far they wish to go.

Government is just spending too much money.

Remember that government doesn't earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else.

Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.

The revenue of the country, levied almost insensibly to the taxpayer, goes on from year to year, increasing beyond either the interests or the prospective wants of the Government

We sincerely believed that we don't tax too little in Washington. We spend too much.

More taxes mean more money to spend for public welfare.

What the federal government does basically is borrow money from people and mail it to people.

The more acquisitions the government makes abroad, the more taxes the people have to pay at home.

You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.

If the government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes for you and me for? Why don't it make what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the balance to us?

There's no reason to raise taxes. Taxes should be lower... The problem we have is that government spends too much, not that taxes are too low.

We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy. The left wants to focus on the deficit so they can take us away from the focus on spending as a percentage of the economy.

The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect.

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

If we increase spending, we have got to raise taxes or any combination.

There's a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think its an investment.

to the end that wealth may bear its due proportion of the expenses of government.

Taxes are always too high.

Taxes are the lifeblood of Government

There is spending in the tax code.