Quotes By Mitch Daniels

I certainly believe in limited government but protecting children against injury abuse is certainly inside my sphere of things that the government should do.

We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in.

Finally, treat domestic energy production as the economic necessity it is and the job creator it can be. Drill, and frack, and lease, and license, unleash in every way the jobs potential in the enormous energy resources we have been denying ourselves.

Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards, commissions, and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time, money, and energy far beyond any real contribution they make.

Every citizen who stops smoking, or loses a few pounds, or starts managing his chronic disease with real diligence, is caulking a crack for the benefit of us all.

When they call the slightest spending reductions 'painful', we will say 'If government spending prevents pain, why are we suffering so much of it?' And 'If you want to experience real pain, just stay on the track we are on.'

I believe that the Right to Work issue is a perfectly appropriate one for Indiana to look at.

The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing.

We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer.

As Republicans, our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life's ladder.

A one-time tax does not get figured into people's investment decisions.

Government does not create jobs, it only creates the conditions that make jobs more or less likely.

The president's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars.

So tonight I propose one more step that I would rather not propose. I ask the most fortunate among us, those citizens earning over $100,000 per year, for one year, to pay an additional one percent on the income they receive.

The perverse presumption that places the burden of proof on the challenger of spending must be inverted, back to the rule that applies elsewhere in life: 'Prove to me why we should.'

We don't have a prayer of defeating the Red Threat of our generation without a long boom of almost unprecedented duration.

If our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.'

Every successful enterprise has a very clear strategic purpose.

We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government.

My record is, far as I know, unimpeachable.

If freedom's best friends cannot unify around a realistic, actionable program of fundamental change, one that attracts and persuades a broad majority of our fellow citizens, big change will not come.

Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.

We are taking challenges and turning them into opportunities by developing homegrown, local energy production to become independent from foreign sources.

Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb.

No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others.

In fact, it works the other way: A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it.

Starting a new retirement plan for those below a certain age is something tens of millions of Americans have already been through at work.

Sure, things could always have been done better, but I just wish people would drop their political hammers for a few weeks, as happened in 2001, and work on the problem at hand.

There is nothing inconsistent about having a conservative outlook and being vigorous.

But if our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.'