Unnecessary Expenditures Quotes

The purchase of unnecessary military hardware is undoubtedly the most wasteful element in American government.

I did 'Land of the Dead,' which was the biggest zombie film I had ever made. I don't think it needed to be that big. That money went largely to the cast. They were great, but I don't think that money needed to be spent.

There is so much crap [waste] going on over there [the Pentagon], I could run the Navy Department on the cost-of-living increases alone.

I don't want to be an apologist for poverty, but I can't stand waste, useless spending, wasted energy and having to live squandering stuff.

Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.

Each year Citizens Against Government Waste releases the 'Congressional Pig Book.' Outrage over spending for shrimp on treadmills, combating Goth culture studies, bridges to nowhere, etc. ensues for about a week, and then the waste continues.

Unfortunately, the original Patriot Act did not require these funds to be allocated on the basis of risk. Billions have been distributed with virtually no risk assessment, and little planning. Nor has the federal government set preparedness standards to help state and local governments use the money wisely. The District of Columbia used part of its grant to buy leather jackets and to send sanitation workers to self-improvement seminars. Newark bought air-conditioned garbage trucks. Columbus, Ohio, bought body armor for fire department dogs. These are not the priorities of a nation under threat.

A lot of the time, excess on a film set is just damaging.

We need to cut unnecessary weapons programs like the F-35 fighter plane that cost trillions of dollars and don't even work.

A lot of the money spent in the name of relief has nothing to do with relief.

Anytime a large, emergency spending bill makes its way through Congress, the potential for mischief is great.

To keep something around just because it is already on the books, I think, is wrong.

Bureaucracies cling to their office space, their secretaries [assistants], their official cars, and their every allotted dollar and personnel position with a tenacity that drowning men might well envy.

The biggest problem with the deficit is programs that are unconstitutional and wasteful.

I do, kind of, spend a lot. And just on stupid things. Because I don't really know what to do. What are you supposed to do? Um. It just seems like way too much. We don't deserve it, at all, for what we do.

There are hugely creative military leaders who have contemplated just the kind of changes that are needed. In Washington, however, strength lies with the opponents rather than the proponents of change. And the opponents possess the ultimate political weapon of mass destruction. They can accuse leaders who want to challenge the status quo of making America weak. So we’re left with all the systems the country has accumulated to counter every post World War II defense challenge: multiple air forces, multiple expeditionary forces; multiple cyber-commands. We can’t afford what we have. We don’t need much of what we have.

There's more pork barrel than strategic need to the Galaxy.

Lawsuits - and frivolous lawsuits - are just sapping the life out of the people who perform the services and deliver the goods for the rest of the citizenry in the State of Montana.

The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.

They kept us on the air probably a year more than they should have.

It was frightful and almost incredible…that any government should go a—hunting to the uttermost ends of the earth to find means and opportunities of squandering its treasure…for no conceivable purpose of policy.

The vast amount of waste and sheer stupidity in government - from the Pentagon to the Food and Drug Administration - could fill committee agendas for years.