“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by”
Thomas Jefferson
“I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.”
“Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people”
Wendell Phillips
“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other”
James Madison
“They're never going to be repaid. Adam Smith said that no government had ever repaid its debts and the same can be said of the private sector. The U.S. government does not intend to repay its trillion dollar debt to foreign central banks and, even if it did intend to, there's no way in which it could. Most of the corporations now are avoiding paying their pension fund debts and their health care debts.”
Michael Hudson
“We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much”
Ronald Reagan
“Cutting waste is a politically difficult task because almost every program has an active constituency that profits from the status quo, ... But Sen. Chambliss recognizes that the federal government must set priorities. He has taken a long- term view of the nation's fiscal problems and makes a serious effort to tackle the enormous debt being left to future generations.”
Tom Schatz
