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National Debt Quotes

Browse 128 quotes about National Debt.

National Debt Quotes

“I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].”

Ifs Thinking Giving Numbers Solve Debt National Debt

Author:Michele Bachmann

“If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?”

Ifs Pay Conceit Conceited National Debt

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

“In FY 2006, interest payments alone on the national debt cost us $406 billion. . . . What a waste. . . . That $406 billion is pathetically squandered on interest, just because we lacked the discipline to pay our bills when due.”

Political Interest Pay Discipline Cost Waste Bills Debt Dues Billions Payment National Debt

Book:Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too Soon)

Source: Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too Soon)

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”

Source: Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way

“Posterity does not pay off anything of the national debt. Each administration adds to the debt left to it, and the promise of liquidation implied in every bond issue is a false promise.”

Doe Left Pay Issues Promise Add Debt Administration Posterity National Debt Implied False Promises

Author:Frank Chodorov

“Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history.”

Has Beens Periods Six Majors Come Up Debt Libertarian Budgets Statistics Balanced Crash Depressing Economist Deficit Reducing 1930s Crusades National Debt Balanced Budget

Author:Molly Ivins

“His presidency ended more than a decade ago, but politicians, Democrat and Republican, still talk about Ronald Reagan. Al Gore has an ad noting that in Congress he opposed the Reagan budget cuts. He says that because Bill Bradley was one of 36 Democratic Senators who voted for the cuts. Gore doesn’t point out that Bradley also voted against the popular Reagan tax cuts and that it was the tax cuts that piled up those enormous deficits, a snowballing national debt.”

Stills Cutting Politician Republican Taxes Bills Democratic Democrat Congress Debt Decades Enormous Budgets Als Ads Senators Presidency Deficit Gore Tax Cuts National Debt Budget Cuts

Author:Bruce Morton

“Avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, we should remember also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it”

Should Remember Greater Danger Debt Occasions Expenses Avoiding Cultivating Timely National Debt Farewell Address Oppurtunity

Book:Washington's Farewell Address: The Proclamation of Jackson Against Nullification, and the Declaration of Independence

Source: Washington's Farewell Address: The Proclamation of Jackson Against Nullification, and the Declaration of Independence

“We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.”

Lines Cutting Amount Taxes Paid Add Bottom Debt Sooner Or Later Deficit Bottom Line Tax Cuts Surplus National Debt

Author:John Spratt

“Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.”

Mean Children Problem Today America Choices Our Children Burden Debt Grandchildren Shifting Bucks Children And Grandchildren National Debt Bad Choices Debt Ceiling Failure Of Leadership

Author:Barack Obama

“The blame for [the national debt] lies with the Congress and the President, with Democrats and Republicans alike, most all of whom have been unwilling to make the hard choices or to explain to the American people that there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

People Has Beens Hard Government Lying Choices President Republican Blame Democrat Congress Debt Lunch Unwilling National Debt Free Lunch Congress And The President

Author:Warren Rudman

“..avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.”

Source: Monuments of Washington's Patriotism: Containing a Fac Simile of His Publick Accounts Kept During the Revolutionary War; and Some of the Most Interesting Documents Connected with His Military Command and Civil Administration; Embracing, Among Others, the Farewell Address to the People of the United States

“I pledge that I have no intention of raising taxes in my second term.”

Political Stupid Taxes Humorous Intention National Debt Raising Taxes

Author:William J. Clinton

“The current tax code is a daily mugging.”

Political Taxes Currents Code National Debt

Author:Ronald Reagan

“In 1950, American families sent 1 of 50 of their hard earned dollars to Washington: Today it is 1 in 4.”

Hard Today Political Taxes Dollars National Debt American Family

Author:John Ensign

“It's a game. We tax lawyers teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich-and the IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich teaching them.”

Play Political Games Teach Rich Teaching Taxes Lawyer Get Rich Irs National Debt

Author:John Grisham

“The nation ought to have a tax system which looks like someone designed it on purpose.”

Looks Political Purpose Nations Ought Taxes National Debt Tax System

Author:William E. Simon

“Your profits are going to be cut down to a reasonably low level by taxation. Your income will be subject to higher taxes. Indeed in these days, when every available dollar should go to the war effort, I do not think that any American citizen should have a net income in excess of $25,000 per year after payment of taxes.”

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1942, Volume 11

“Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx - first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Government being Big Brother.”

Firsts Stills Ideas Bigs Government Age Political Century Brother Taxes Program Imaginative Tag Haircuts Nothing New National Debt Boyish

Author:Ronald Reagan

“I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.”

Hands Government Political Policy Taxes Fortune Criticize National Debt

Author:George Bernard Shaw

“All taxes are a drag on economic growth. It's only a question of degree.”

Political Growth Economic Taxes Degrees Drag Economic Growth National Debt

Author:Alan Greenspan

“The modern spectacle of vanished forests and eroded lands, wasted petroleum and ruthless mining, national debts recklessly increased until they are repudiated, and continual revision of positive law, is evidence of what an age without veneration does to itself and its successors.”

Doe Age Law Modern Land Evidence Conservative Debt Forests Ruthless Revision Successors Mining National Debt Veneration Petroleum

Book:The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

Source: The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

“I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.”

Believe Country Wisdom Politics Liberty Economy Dangerous Blessing Raises Debt Administration Curse Liberalism Republic Aristocracy National Debt

Book:The Papers of Andrew Jackson: 1821-1824

Source: The Papers of Andrew Jackson: 1821-1824

“The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents - number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome - so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.”

“I would vote against raising the national debt ceiling. Again, this is about mortgaging the future of unborn generations of Americans. It's a form of taxation without representation. I don't think we can do that.”

Thinking Form Can Do Generations Vote Debt Representation Taxation Ceilings Unborn National Debt Debt Ceiling Taxation Without Representation

Author:Mike Lee

“I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.”

Government Simple Principles Blessing Debt Saving Devices Officers Revenue Salary Savings Partisans Discharge National Debt Frugal Multiplication

Book:The Works of Thomas Jefferson: 1799-1803

Source: The Works of Thomas Jefferson: 1799-1803

“Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation. If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy.”

Ifs Children Nations Interest Pay Our Children Debt Reasonable Internals Bankruptcy National Debt

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1939, Volume 8

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1939, Volume 8

“The national debt is totally unlike a family budget for about a gazillion reasons, not the least of which being that families cannot raise money by fiat or deflate the size of their debt unilaterally and that family members die instead of existing infinitely.”

Reason Dies Family Members Raises Size Debt Budgets Family Members National Debt

Author:Matt Taibbi