Mick Mulvaney Quotes

The best deficit reduction program is a growing economy.

Without deficit reduction, we cannot have sustained economic growth.

The first order of business is the elimination of the annual deficit.

I have spoken about deficits, and I think deficits are important because they address broad economic and financial stability. We need to talk about that.

Traditionally, the way deficits have been cut is you hold expenditures more or less constant in real dollars and then let growth come in to fill it up.

As long as we're focused on spending, there are only two ways to do that: One is spend less, and Democrats have no solutions for that. Or we have pro-growth policies that make the economy grow so the dead-weight cost of government becomes a smaller percentage of the economy and therefore less expensive.

Look at what happened in the 1990s: when they balanced the federal budget, it was through growth in the economy and controlling spending.

Sequestration was not designed to be anyone's ideal method for getting our hands around government spending, and it certainly isn't mine.

When the economy is growing, there's a lot that can be done to deal with the deficit.

In order to reduce the deficit, there has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

Monetary discipline forces fiscal discipline on the politicians as well.

Deficit reduction is not an end in itself. It is the means to an end. Canadians must now decide what kind of country they want to build with the hard-won dividend.

We have a spending problem, not a taxing problem. The less we spend, the more jobs we have the potential to create.

The deficit had become a symbol of our inability to control and manage the cost of government.

A dynamic economy, with more citizens working and paying taxes, will be our strongest tool to bring down budget deficits

The single greatest force for deficit reduction is a growing economy.

Countries like Canada, Korea, China, Germany can and should use fiscal space. Some of them are doing it, not all.

We must stop spending money that we just don't have. Historic debt leads to historic tax increases, which stifle job growth.

I would use the debt limit. I don't want to say - I want to be unpredictable, because, you know, we need unpredictability. Everything is so predictable with our country.

Growth works. What we're doing in the administration to spur growth in terms of regulatory form work. And what we're working is to make sure that those tax cuts add to that. We do believe that sustained 3 percent economic growth is possible and that that is the way you can balance the budget long-term.

I support responsible spending, and balancing the budget, but this tax cut and the budget cuts of last month accomplish neither of these goals.

I was the chairman of the Budget Committee and the lead architect the last time it happened in Washington, and when we did it we had great economic growth, we cut taxes, and we had a big surplus.

We gotta control inflation, quit spending our money on everything. But this years tax increase, why it's the biggest in history.

I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits. I inherited a trillion-dollar deficit. ... This notion that somehow we caused the deficits is just wrong. It's just not true. ... If they start trying to give you a bunch of facts and figures suggesting that it's true, what they're not telling you is they baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts and a prescription drug plan that they didn't pay for and the wars.

We don't need more politicians insisting we have deficits because you're not taxed enough. Those deficits ballooned from an economy that didn't grow enough and from 50 years of government spending too much.