Public Money Quotes

I view roads as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress and their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post office revenues; but the other revenues will soon be called into their aid, and it will be a source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of public moneys.

As President, I will end once and for all the use of taxpayer funds to promote the National Endowment for the Arts and other programs that subsidize amoral and degrading activities.

Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.

If we want to prevent both climate and ecological catastrophes, the key task is to minimise the amount of land we use to feed ourselves, while changing the way the remaining land is farmed. Instead, governments almost everywhere pour public money into planetary destruction.

Many financial and industrial companies have been bailed out with the public's money, but very few of those who had run those companies have been punished for their failures. Yes, the top managers of those companies have lost their jobs - but with a fat pension and mostly with a handsome severance payment.

All the mega corporations on the planet make their obscene profits off the labor and suffering of others, with complete disregard for the effects on the workers, environment, and future generations. We have a straightforward proposal: if they want public money, we want public control. It's that simple.

The Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement were both, in a sense, complaining about the same thing, namely the use of public money to rescue failed banks.

There is no such thing as a private institution in America; there is no such thing as a public institution. Private institutions go after public money and public institutions go after private money.

To the senate belongs, in the first place, the sole care and management of the public money. For all returns that are brought into the treasury, as well as all the payments that are issued from it, are directed by their orders. Nor is it allowed to the quaestors to apply any part of the revenue to particular occasions as they arise, without a decree of the senate

Let me make it very clear. There are no taxpayer funds going to the Adani mine.

The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.

Bain also asked Kansas City for a $3 million tax break. The Bain executives were taking home $36 million in borrowed funds and were asking Kansas City to forfeit $3 million in public money for police officers, roads and schools? More free stuff!

Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honor.

I must tell you something about the Ku Klux, they are raging on the other side of the River. They have whipped several white men, whipped and killed several Negroes. They whipped Colonel Huggins, the Superintendent of the free schools nearly to death, and everybody rejoiced when they heard it, for everybody hated him. He squandered the public money, buying pianofortes, organs, sofas, and furniture for the Negro School house in Aberdeen. The people are taxed beyond endurance. The Ku Klux gave him seventy lashes, and then gave him ten days to leave the country. he left and went to Jackson. There was a Regiment of Militia came into Aberdeen Friday. They are sent here to put down the Ku Klux. Huggins has come back with the Militia, but I wouldn't give a straw for his life, for he will be killed. It is the opinion of most everybody there will be war. the Yankees coming here will make the Negroes more insolent. With Country full of Yankees, things are going too far, for the free whites of the South are determined not to put up with it.

The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until someone is asked to pay the bill.

Every public official concerned with administering public funds owes it to all our citizens to be prepared at any time to account to the last penny of the public money placed in his hands.

What is the inducement of these great States to put down the Bank of the United States? Their avarice combined with their love of domination …. The great commercial States are to monopolize the benefits which are to arise from the deposits of your public money.

Setting the state budget is one of the most important tasks we undertake at the state Capitol - because after all, it's the people's money - not the government's.

The squandering of the public money sinks into comparative insignificance as a temptation to corruption when compared with the squandering of the public lands.

[I am not for] spending the public money in the encouragement of the Fine Arts. Whether it is to be painting or sculpture, or both; if painting, what sort of painting, what are to be the subjects chosen, and who are to be the artists employed? All these questions furnish ample food for discussion, difference, and dispute.

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.

Doing nothing and shrinking spending may save us public money in the short term but could cost us a great deal more over time as the recession takes hold for much longer.

Bad things happen to good people every day in this country, and we don’t have a fund for them. The 9-11 fund with public money should be looked at for what it was—a great success, but it should never be done again with public money.