Budget Quotes

The "Ways & Means Committee" is a committee that's supposed to find the Ways to divide up the Means.

Budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders, but by slow economic growth and periodic recessions. And any new recession would break all deficit records. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.

A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget.

Hurray! Congress is to adjourn! Only four more days of Congressional burglary on the Treasury!

When it comes to the budget, we know that we shouldn't be cutting more on core investments, like education, that are going to help us grow in the future. And we've already seen the deficit cut in half. It's going down faster than any time in the last 60 years. So why would we make more cuts in education, more cuts in basic research? Nobody thinks that's a good idea.

Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

I put forward a budget of what I called "middle-class economics" that continues to be fiscally prudent but makes necessary investments for us to continue the economic momentum and job growth.

We will never get anywhere with our finances till we pass a law saying...every time we appropriate something, we...pass another bill...stating where the money is coming from.

Balancing your budget is like protecting your virtue. You have to learn when to say no.

It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.

The government is currently experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and we musn't feed the habit by injecting more tax dollars into it.

The budget is like a mythical bean bag. Congress votes mythical beans into it, then reaches in and tries to pull real ones out.

The Federal Budget can and should be made an instrument of prosperity and stability, not a deterrent to recovery.

Budget: a way of going broke methodically

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

Our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and a budgetary surplus. It is between two kinds of deficits: a chronic deficit of inertia, as the unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy; or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues, and achieve -- and I believe this can be done -- a budget surplus. The first type of deficit is a sign of waste and weakness; the second reflects an investment in the future.

A budget is more than just a series of numbers on a page; it is an embodiment of our values.

One of the issues that we professional newspaper columnists are required by union regulations to voice grave concern about is the federal budget deficit, which we refer to as the "mounting" deficit, because every extra word helps when you have to produce a certain number of gravely concerned newsprint inches.