Mike Gravel Quotes

With each new appropriations bill Congress considers, I have to ask myself, 'Is this a good way to spend taxpayer dollars?'

Before we give you billions more, we want to know what you've done with the trillion you've got.

If we are to attract private investment, if we are to be able to make the legislature feel the moneys from taxpayers are being used properly, we must be ever vigilant of the duty to efficiently use all funds we receive.

As a member of Congress, I believe Congress must provide oversight of actions by the Executive Branch as our system of checks and balances requires.

I disapproved from the first moment... the want of a bill of rights to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government …

Remember that every dollar spent by the federal government is spent in somebody's district.

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

No branch of government should ever be able to combine the power of the sword with the power of the purse.

It is up to Congress to see to it that its powers do not slip through its fingers

Does not the President ... submit this subject to Congress for their sanction? Does he not recognize the principle ... that no treaty is binding until we pass the laws for executing it?”

Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.

When you’re spending 24 billion dollars in pork barrel transportation projects how can you go to the American people and talk about tax increases.

We don’t care what the cost-benefit is. We’re going to build it somehow because Congress says it’s going to be built.

The Pentagon says that they are too big to be audited. That’s an insult. They spend $700 billion a year. They need to be audited.

The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive.

Congress is not an ATM

We in Congress have the money but we don’t have the expertise.

It's Congress' job to keep an eye on the other agencies and the workings of the entire government. It is our constitutional duty.

The best way to put the federal bureaucracy back on a leash is to make it obey the laws the people write.

There is an important role for a United States senator as a check and balance on the president of the United States.

The bottom line is this: in an era of mounting fiscal challenges and competing demands, we must actively seek ways to free up time, money, and manpower to invest back into our top priorities.

it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.

The Executive is charged officially in the Departments under it with the disbursement of the public money, and is responsible for the faithful application of it to the purposes for which it is raised. The Legislature is the watchful guardian over the public purse. It is its duty to see that the disbursement has been honestly made.

We need to focus on reducing property taxes. We need to focus on education funding. We need to focus on getting term limits on elected officials.

I came to Congress on the promise of cutting wasteful government spending. There are plenty of examples of the government playing loose with taxpayer money, but none more so than how we spend our foreign aid dollars.