Top 1200 Wasteful Spending Quotes & Sayings

Spending is not caring. Spending is what politicians do instead of caring. Spending more does not guarantee success. Politicians like to measure spending because it is easier than measuring actual metrics of accomplishment.

The Concord Coalition in Virginia complained about pork projects and wasteful spending in the federal budget. Consider the Senate chaplain's salary. As occupations go, only mind readers in Los Angeles have fewer things to do all day.

Make no mistake: I will work with both Democrats and Republicans to cut wasteful spending and reduce our debt in a balanced, responsible way.

Monopolists always defend their monopolies by arguing that competition is wasteful. When the railroad barons completed their monopoly, they argued it would be wasteful to have competing rail lines, AT&T said the same thing. But today, the size and scope of these monopolies is different.

Many governments are giving subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption that encourage greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as they are spending on projects to promote clean energy. This is a wasteful use of scarce budget resources.

A government decision that slashes spending at the wrong time and sends a weak economy into a tailspin can be just as undisciplined as one that unleashes a wasteful spending spree in an overheated environment.

100 years ago, buying something you could make was considered wasteful; now making something you could buy is considered wasteful. I am not convinced this is a step in the right direction.

We should empower teachers to do their job by cutting wasteful spending and crippling bureaucracy, not classroom resources our educators and students need.

No one could argue with a straight face that the couples getting married today are much happier just because their wedding celebrations cost three times as much as those in 1980. Bigger mansions and costlier parties are wasteful in the same sense that larger antlers on all bull elk are wasteful. The good news is that simple changes in the tax system can eliminate much of this waste without having to deny people the right to decide for themselves how best to spend their money.

When you look at February's (2011) deficit spending alone, and the fact that it was larger than what our total deficit spending was in 2007, the proposals that the Senate is sending us simply are ridiculous, because it's not even a solution. It doesn't address the amount of spending that we have in a week's time. We need to get serious.

I am honored that my freshman class colleagues have put their trust in me to represent our historic class at the leadership table. The incoming freshman class of Representatives is large and diverse but we share many common goals including cutting wasteful spending, getting our economy back on track and making government smarter and more efficient.

We are now speeding down the road of wasteful spending and debt, and unless we can escape we will be smashed in inflation.

Whenever people in Washington complain about spending cuts, they mean spending cuts that would affect defense contractors. They want to massively increase spending cuts everywhere else in the budget.

We've got to take some drastic steps in this country. We can't keep spending and spending.

It is being alleged that the Federal Government is 'cutting' spending. In fact, we are not 'cutting' anything. Defense spending under this budget would rise by 4.3 percent over last year. Other discretionary spending would also rise.

If everyone in America can easily see who and what their lawmakers are requesting taxpayer money for, we can keep elected officials honest, end the days of political, special interest favors, and reduce wasteful spending.

In Congress, while the House’s proposed defense budget calls for significant increases, it also cuts 11 billion dollars from veterans spending - including healthcare and disability pay. Be clear: we can’t equate spending on veterans with spending on defense.

I run a taxpayer group - the most powerful guy in D.C., nonsense. OK? There are buildings with thousands of people in them, all lobbying for more spending and higher levels of spending and more government commitments. And there are a handful - a handful of groups that fight for less spending.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

If politicians want to save money, that's fine. They can look for all the wasteful spending they want, but not where the lives of miners are involved.

Government spending either is completely wasteful, merely transfers income, purchases an intermediate rather than a final good, or purchases valuable final services whose value cannot be ascertained because the transaction is not made by private parties exchanging their own resources in a market setting.

Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing private spending equivalently.

The Gillard government must give up its addiction to wasteful spending borrowing and taxing.

I'm not going to stop beating up on the Democrats for wasteful spending.

As a taxpayer, I want to assure you that Republicans are doing everything we can to reduce wasteful spending.

I went through all my electric bills, the water bills, the phone bills, elevator contracts, and I found enough wasteful spending without reducing any programs anywhere, without reducing any services, I found enough wasteful spending to pay my entire salary for three years.

Conservatives in general, and even so called Tea Party conservatives, are not against transportation spending. Indeed, interstate commerce is one purpose of interstate highways and byways, and is one of the things the federal government is actually supposed to spend our tax dollars on. What conservatives are opposed to is needless and excessive spending, pork-barrel spending, deficit spending, spending to pick winners and losers among American individuals and corporations, and spending to promote the social and economic whims of the Washington few.

Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life.

Instead of cutting waste, the Obama Administration is hurting workers. President Obama should stop protecting wasteful government spending.

We laugh at liberals who declare that their favorite spending programs should be exempt because the spending is for a noble cause.

I refuse to go along with the status quo of more wasteful federal spending, and I refuse to let the Obama Administration continue to force their misguided ideology through regulatory overreach.

The problem of giving health care to everybody cannot be solved so long as we're spending huge sums of money for war. Already we have a very wasteful healthcare system, the most wasteful healthcare system in the world. I mean, we spend the most money and still have 40 million people without insurance. Compare us to Cuba. Cuba is our enemy, run by a dictator, Fidel Castro. But people in Cuba get health care at least equal to that of the United States - with very scarce resources. So I think this issue is the most important domestic issue.

In Congress, while the House's proposed defense budget calls for significant increases, it also cuts 11 billion dollars from veterans spending - including healthcare and disability pay. Be clear: we can't equate spending on veterans with spending on defense.

The federal government is far larger than the Founding Fathers ever intended it to be. We have racked up over $16 trillion of debt through wasteful spending, and it is time that we cut that waste and start reducing the size of our government.

I came to Congress on the promise of cutting wasteful government spending. There are plenty of examples of the government playing loose with taxpayer money, but none more so than how we spend our foreign aid dollars.

I'd love to see lower spending levels, and in absence of lower spending levels, I'd love to see us reallocate where some of that spending is and really address the entitlements that continue growing.

The fact that many private expenditures are mutually offsetting actually happens to constitute a remarkably good bit of fiscal news. Mutually offsetting spending patterns are wasteful in the same way that military arms races are. In such situations, if each party spends less, nothing is sacrificed, yet resources are freed up that can be put to much better uses.

Spending an extra dollar on the D.C. public school system isn't spending an extra dollar on education. Spending an extra dollar with the Pentagon doesn't buy you an extra dollar on defense. Republicans need to look skeptically at military spending.

You've got to either say you're going to cut taxes and find some spending cuts. I think we ought to reform long-term entitlement spending in the country, but you can't out of one side of your mouth say, 'Yes, we're for tax cuts, we're for spending discipline, and we're for bringing down the debt.'

From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America. From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick - come home, America.

To me pornography is...spending all your money and not educating the people in America, but spending it instead on weapons.

Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion.

Cut defense spending as part of cutting all federal spending.

If there is wasteful spending, I will not support it.

Planned Parenthood is absolutely wasteful spending.

Now, so, if you want to blame someone for wasteful spending, the Republicans are in the majority.

From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America.

The American people elected us here to cut spending so we can create an environment for jobs in America. The House has acted. We have demonstrated that we want to see spending, discretionary spending, brought down to levels of 2008. We've seen no counteraction. We have seen no position that has been expressed by the other side at all.

We're told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We're told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it's hard to reach the drive-through window at McDonald's from a speeding train. And we're told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine?

It's wasteful spending like this that not only forces tax increases and cuts in vital services... but also really make you wonder: who is City Hall looking out for?

The reality is that business and investment spending are the true leading indicators of the economy and the stock market. If you want to know where the stock market is headed, forget about consumer spending and retail sales figures. Look to business spending, price inflation, interest rates, and productivity gains.

Whether government finances its added spending by increasing taxes, by borrowing, or by inflating the currency, the added spending will be offset by reduced private spending. Furthermore, private spending is generally more efficient than the government spending that would replace it because people act more carefully when they spend their own money than when they spend other people's money.

We pledge to you that we will create jobs. End economic uncertainty and make America more competitive. We will cut Washington wasteful spending and reduce the size of government. And we will reform Congress and restore your trust in government.

It's important to ensure that the person who replaces Tim Scott be a reliable conservative, a proven fighter and a leader who will join our mission to cut wasteful Washington spending. I'm convinced the best person for the job is Larry Grooms.

The Democrats want government to do the spending. Senator McCain wants families to do the spending.

I have fought against excessive spending my entire career. And I got plans to reduce and eliminate unnecessary and wasteful spending and if there's anybody here who thinks there aren't agencies of government where spending can be cut and their budgets slashed they have not spent a lot of time in Washington.

As Speaker of the North Carolina House, I've proven I'm a problem-solver, balancing budgets, cutting wasteful spending, and providing teachers with historic pay raises.

If you are spending too much, you cut back on spending and you raise your revenues. And that's it.

The SBA should be redirected to focus on its core missions of capital access, contracting, and counseling, while reducing duplication, overlap, and wasteful spending. Doing so will greatly improve its ability to better advocate for small businesses.

In fact, entitlement spending on programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up 54% of federal spending, and spending is projected to double within the next decade. Medicare is growing by 9% annually, and Medicaid by 8% annually.