Jim Wallis Quotes

The Pentagon budget, like all government spending, is an expression of priorities.

Looking at the high cost of occupation in Iraq and the needs we have in this country, would it not have been better to have smaller tax cuts in order to keep down the deficits.

If we can spend over $3 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, surely we can find the money to meet the long-term needs of our people.

When efforts are made to shape policy based on budgets rather than the public good, then the needs of the people will not be met.

I have long believed there is a lot of waste in the defense budget.

wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?' As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs to little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs.

You cannot tackle Britain's debts without tackling the unreformed welfare system.

We are actually a very rich country with a lot of resources and the ability to do almost whatever we want. We could eliminate poverty in America by spending a fraction of what we spend on defense.

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.

My friend Paul Ryan talks about fiscal responsibility, but voted to put two wars on a credit card.

Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a spending problem. Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a priority problem. It is time that we begin to fine tune our focus and decide what the priority of government ought to be.

To do what we are doing in this budget to our children, cutting their health care funds, decreasing opportunity, simply so we can pay for tax cuts and a war in Iraq is beyond belief, and we need to reverse it.

We need to stop spending money on death, the war in Iraq and on enhancing the lives of the people in our own country.

I was able to promote a strong defense budget when it could have been cut a lot more severely.

For the first time in history, we declared war without financing it. Americans have not been asked to pay for it through taxes.

Never before in the history of civilization has there been a tax cut in time of war.

[The] up-and-down pattern of [defense] spending over the last 18 years averages out to below zero percent real growth. In other words, if defense spending had followed a path of zero percent real growth, the U.S. probably could have obtained more defense for its dollar.

The Democrats want to save more on defense so they can spend more money to buy votes through the welfare state.

When the greatest part of the [U.S.] budget pays for our defense and the livelihood of retirees, it is pointless to pretend that public spending is an embarrassment consisting only of welfare and waste.

The Republicans can't say no to military spending, and the Democrats can't say no to social spending.

Party conferences don't purchase fighter jets.

You do not have to cut finds from the elderly sick and still keep the yacht subsidy;

Sometimes Republicans want to cut the social welfare programs and yet they ask for billions and billions more for the Defense Department. I don’t take that approach.

Foreign policy debates are frequently segregated from domestic policy ones, so commentators who propose increasing the defense budget or sending more foreign aid are seldom asked to explain which domestic programs they’d cut or which taxes they’d raise, in order to find the money.

Our pandering politicians compete to add names to the dependency of entitlement rolls instead of evaluating the success of these programs by how many people leave the dole and are restored to an independence. And these bulging entitlements are saddling our offspring with unsustainable generational debt.