Allen West Quotes

We have a serious structural deficit problem. And it needs to be addressed. The president is trying to address it through reforms of Social Security, but the problem is there with other entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

I'm the guy that has written at great length about exactly how we should profoundly reform Social Security. If I were afraid of going after entitlements, I wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't have put Medicaid reform in this budget, I wouldn't have called for the reductions in spending, which people will scream about, but I think are necessary.

Progressives should be willing to talk about ways to ensure the long-term viability of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but those conversations should not be part of a plan to avert the fiscal cliff.

It is foolish for Republicans to continue opening the door to job-killing tax hikes while Democrats refuse to explain how they propose to reform mandatory spending - mostly entitlements - that makes up almost two-thirds of the federal budget.

Trillions of dollars in out-of-control entitlement spending cannot be remedied by cuts in NASA, or even in the entire discretionary budget, defense included. Rather, the financial bleeding needs to be staunched where the hole is and nowhere else.

Unfortunately, the (budget) does not . . . help Congress reform such programs as Medicaid and Medicare, which both grow at average rate of around 8 percent each year through 2015 and will continue to eat up more of the total federal budget.

Any politician that says no tax revenue or zero spending cuts does not deserve reelection. Our hole is so deep in this country with the debt and the debt service, the interest on that debt, before the big expenses come for Social Security and Medicare - for we baby boomers in a few years - that everything has to be on the table.

Social Security's not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you've got to put all of it on the table.

The Missourians I hear from just don't buy the idea that the only way to tackle the national debt is to drastically alter Medicare and Social Security.

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.

I'd love to see lower spending levels, and in absence of lower spending levels, I'd love to see us reallocate where some of that spending is and really address the entitlements that continue growing.

Republicans' focus on defunding or scaling back Obamacare - an unpopular entitlement program - rather than entitlements generally, namely Social Security and Medicare, has raised questions about their true objective. But critics forget that spending is fungible.

There is a lot of fiscal conservatives in the United States senate that didn't vote for that because we understand that national security spending is not the reason why we have a debt. Our debt is being driven by the way Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and, by the way, the interest on the debt is structured in the years to come.

Most people don't realize that two-thirds of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon. The U.S. government is an insurance company with an Army.

I don't believe there's a red state in America where people believe you should cut Medicare, Social Security and veterans' benefits rather than doing away with corporate tax loopholes.

I'd hate to paint with a broad brush, but many Democrats don't feel that we have a crisis in entitlements, and Republicans do.

And in terms of entitlement reforms, we have to save them from themselves, because if we don't reform social security and we don't reform Medicare, they're going to actually implode.

Medicaid is essentially bankrupt, Medicare is essentially bankrupt, why the heck would we give the federal government another entitlement program to manage?

Obama has demonstrated no desire to make tough choices. Americans demand a more efficient, effective government, but his budget calls for more taxes and more spending. It employs deceptive accounting gimmicks but does nothing to tackle long-term entitlement problems, nothing to save Medicare or fix Social Security.

The government has made $44 trillion in promises we can't afford to keep. We must get serious now about our long-term budgetary problems, recognizing that the sooner we act, the less painful the choices will be.

We as Republicans understand that we have got to protect these... entitlement programs - these entitlement programs for our seniors today. And we have to sit down and have a discussion. We need more ideas on the table.

I would hope that we could have this in an adult fashion and stop demagogueing the issue anytime you talk about any substantive reforms that will actually save social security and save Medicare and save the system from imploding on itself.

I'm gonna keep Social Security without change, except I'm going to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse; same thing with Medicare.

You eventually have to figure out how to balance the books. So that's the reason I gave up my day job to come do this was to go fight to create the space where spending matches America's capacity to tax, and that means economic growth and a smaller, humbler federal government.

When you talk about entitlement programs, it's not just about - it's not about cutting those programs. It is about saving those programs. Those programs are on a path of fiscal unsustainability.