Cass Sunstein Quotes

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

The debate on how to shrink the federal government is at the core of our problem of government not doing its job.

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

I saw what government programs were and how they were executed. In some cases, they were executed beautifully, but in others, there was tremendous waste.

It is often said by reformers that government should be conducted upon business principles.

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

The era of big government may be over, but the era of big challenges shouldn't be—and you can't meet big challenges with small ideas.

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

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.

In cutting government, we cut a huge variety of programs, a lot of which I would have liked to see increase, and a lot of which I'd like to see decreased more.

It's a question of evidence-based politics. If you know that something does not work, you should not keep doing it.

Conscious of our many problems, I seek today to lay a foundation to our public policy. My fundamental purpose is to devote my term of office to raising the standard of public service in New Jersey.

You know, in a workplace, when you shrink the size of a workforce, there is pain there. But there is no question: we have a government that we can no longer afford. That is the cold, hard fact. So we have to make this more efficient. We have to sunset programs that no longer work. We have to eliminate waste and fraud. We must do this.

The Chodorov Principle: For every social problem A caused by government program X, problem A can be solved by abolishing program X.

Government functions best as a catalyst, not a cure. We need a smarter, more effective government, not a bigger one.

As we seek to improve the management of the federal government, we should keep in mind that the government is not a private corporation. What may make sense for a large corporation may not always make sense for the federal government. In our quest for efficiency, we must not lose sight of the reasons why we enacted certain federal programs in the first place.

The American people are willing to invest their money (taxes) in things that work.

It cost money to fix things so that I would know his bill would not pass. I believe that with $200,000, I can pass our bill.

The problems of the real world are primarily those you are left with when you refuse to apply their effective solutions.

We are spending altogether too much money for government services which are neither practical nor necessary. In addition to this, we are attempting too many functions and we need a simplification of what the Federal government is giving the people.

When a government faces an evil that might be avoided, the usual pattern is to first debate whether or not the evil is real or imagined; then determine how evil it really is; then is it an appropriate function of government to avoid it? Then what are the alternative ways to avoid it? Then what are the costs to avoid it? And finally, is the benefit of avoiding the evil worth the cost? In those cases where it is, it is by this time too late to avoid the evil and discussions shift to ameliorating the evil.

The question of our time is rapidly becoming can government get things done?

When government programs fail, it is often because public officials are clueless about how human beings think and act.

I prefer to work at the policy level, on trying to fix flawed government policies.

Far too many government spending programs have gone years, even decades, without being reauthorized, leaving the American people less able to effectively review, rethink, and possibly eliminate government programs.