Deficit Quotes

We certainly could have voted on making the middle-class tax cuts and tax cuts for working families permanent had the Republicans not insisted that the only way they would support those tax breaks is if we also added $700 billion to the deficit to give tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. That's what was really disturbing.

Well, a deficit reflects an imbalance between spending and revenue, and so narrowing it requires acting on one, the other or both.

The financial report makes it very clear that if we got into honest budgeting today, that in fact we would find ourselves with a much larger deficit than we have today.

I am a deficit hawk.

Well you know I'm very supportive of what the Tea Party is trying to do. They're very concerned with spending, the deficit, the bailouts, you know all of those kinds of things. But I really think that the strength of the Tea Party is being a grassroots movement.

That level of trade deficit throttles real growth in our country and continues the unfortunate path of selling out America. We are not winning the global trade war, we are losing it badly.

All those trucks and barges that carry our goods to port are vital connections to the only force which can balance our trade deficit: export. We must keep doing what we do best if we are going to get America out of the red.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you feel the impact.

When you look at the state of the economy right now, you have to set a priority. And my top priority is the deficit of jobs and economic growth, and especially this perception that the United States could be falling behind especially Asian economies.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.

Because of President Obama's failed record on nearly every issue from the economy to the deficit to Medicare, the Obama campaign has become increasingly dirty, despicable, and desperate.

The folks celebrating Jim Bunning are seeing him as an anti-government, anti-spending activist. But to embrace Jim Bunning is to embrace a strange record, if you really are a libertarian, if you really are a deficit hawk, if you really care about spending and responsibility.

We have to change economic policy: create confidence, foster investment, cut the public deficit, restructure taxation and reform the labor laws.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

To reduce deficit spending and our enormous debt, you reign in spending. You cut the budget. You don't take more from the private sector and grow government with it. And that's exactly what Obama has in mind with this expiration of Bush tax cuts proposal of his.

Europe is difficult to coordinate, and our main deficit may not even lie in this area of finance and economics, but in foreign and security policy. We have a leadership problem because we are still 27 different members who have still not decided on how to work with each other based on what we used to call a European constitution.

Well obviously the economy is critical to everything we do and we need to get the economy back in shape, the deficit down, the debt paid off, so that the economy can grow again and grow properly.

Social Security faces a long-term actuarial deficit, yes.

The only way that we can reduce our financial dependence on the inflow of funds from the rest of the world is to reduce our trade deficit.

Of course we have to address the deficit if we win.

That's what the Romney plan is all about, how to get jobs created, how to get this debt and deficit under control, how to revive small businesses so we can create jobs, and how to bring growth and opportunity to society instead of this class warfare, instead of speaking to people like they're stuck in some class or station in life.

In addition to myself and a number of others, President Clinton talked about the deficit and the debt issue. And he pointed out, really, what I pointed out, which is that when he left office, we actually had projected surpluses for a long period of time, because when he put together his economic plan, he did it in a balanced way.

Children from like 8 and even up to the college age - Spider-Man appeals to a fairly broad demographic but, like I said, a mean age probably of 12 is a good mark - they process information so quickly and it's not because of attention deficit or short attention span.

You know, dramas are much more expensive to do than say a comedy, so any kind of deficit like that is picked up on when it comes time for them to pick up new shows.

At the same time, Republicans are pushing a $70 billion tax package that will overwhelmingly benefit the most wealthy Americans and actually increases the deficit by $16 billion.

We're going to need to absorb some pain. The Republicans want to pile all the pain on people who can least afford it and the middle class and Democrats under his leadership want to make sure that we can address deficit reduction and continue to make investments and shared sacrifice is going to be imperative in order to be able to do that.

You mentioned Ross Perot. Mr. Perot jumped into the race at the last minute, had one issue that he ran on, the budget deficit, was in and out of the race a couple of times, and still got 20 million votes, didn't have the Internet.

But the debt limit obviously is something that needs to and will be passed. That is not inconsistent with a process and a belief that we have to get significant deficit reduction.

I think it's very important not to confuse the importance of dealing with Social Security in the long term with these short-term deficit reduction challenges. They're different issues.

Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as "deficits as far as the eye can see." But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?