JEB HENSARLING

I'm one of the top 2 or 3 or 4 most conservative members in the House of Representatives when it comes to economics.

What I'd like to do is be able to work with Democrats to reform current entitlement programs for future generations, grandfathering all the grandparents.

If you were approaching the TARP investments from a pure investment standpoint, then there's no doubt in my mind the taxpayer lost, and probably lost big.

Nobody wants to shut down the government.

Listen, if the people in my district wanted to live in France, they'd move to France.

Listen, I wish economic growth only went in one direction. It doesn't. There are economic downturns. They're painful, they're harmful, and they hurt families.

Now, if most Americans want to go out and buy a car, they don't say, you know, 'I think I'll call the chairman of the board of Ford Motor Company and see what kind of deal we can make here.'

In many respects, I guess I would say I was into Tea Party before there was a Tea Party.

The deficit is the symptom, but spending is the disease.

You've got Washington picking winners and losers. And so, all of a sudden, decisions are being made on what helps politicians, not what helps the economy. Some will call it socialism. Some will call it a command and control economy. Whatever it is, it's antithetical to the American experience.

You talk to any of the job creators, and they'll tell you one of the things that concerns them the most is the debt. And so high levels of indebtedness are going to lead to high levels of taxation, which lead to high level of unemployment.

I'm not pro-business. I'm pro-free enterprise.

Millions of Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages. They have a right to know whether members of Congress receive sweetheart deals in order to pay for theirs.

From the takeover of Detroit and the failed stimulus packages to the enactment of Obamacare, the president and congressional Democrats chose to use Americas economic crisis as an excuse to expand government rather than as an opportunity to responsibly shrink it.

I do not want America to default on its debt.

In every jurisdictional area that I can get my fingers on, I want to move us away from the Washington insider economy.

I’m an optimist. If you’re not an optimist, this [Congress] isn’t the job for you.

You cannot borrow and spend your way into prosperity. It does not work.

Competition is good for consumers. It provides more choices at better prices.

In many respects, you can argue Dodd-Frank isn't even law. It's a license for unaccountable, un-elected officials to make law.

If I live my life thinking that something might not pass the Senate, I would never even get up and bother to go to work.

The destruction caused by Hurricane Harvey is unlike anything my home state has ever experienced. As long as I live, I'll never forget those images of elderly women waiting in waist-deep water to be rescued.

I've been dedicated to the proposition that there's been no greater wealth-creation system in the history of mankind than the American free-enterprise system.

I don't know how we will ever have the moral authority to deal with social welfare if we can't deal with corporate welfare.

The easiest thing that is done, unfortunately, in Washington is to spend money today and send the bill to our children and grandchildren.