Jay Weatherill Quotes

We have Triple A Credit but we do not have a Triple A Government

The only way to meet the situation [the financial crisis] is spend less money and to run the City of New York within the limits of our resources. Unless you do this, gentlemen, you will have a difficult problem confronting you by the end of this year and the taxpayers of 1922 and the years thereafter will have to pay the price of our present lack of prudence or our unwillingness to economize at the proper time.

I did not come into government to win an award as the great accountant in the sky and balance budgets.

There needs to be fiscal common sense.

What's really important to me is that we have fiscally responsible balanced budgets.

Leaders should not just talk about - but walk the walk of - fiscal conservatism.

I don't have many litmus tests, but this is one: Any candidate who doesn't understand that we need to balance the budget should not be president of the United States.

The U.S. has a law on the books called the debt limit, but the name is misleading. The debt limit started in 1917 for the purpose of facilitating more national debt, not reducing it. It still serves that purpose. It's unconnected to spending, hurts our credit rating and has been an abject failure at limiting debt.

I think the whole issue of a debt ceiling makes no sense to me whatsoever. Anybody who is remotely adroit at arithmetic doesn't need a debt ceiling to tell you where you are.

You can't strengthen the ranks of your middle class, you can't strengthen and grow the ranks of your businesses and family-owned businesses, unless you are fiscally responsible.

Rather than waiting to restore fiscal responsibility after we pass legislation, we must work to ensure we remain committed to it as we draft legislation.

I think what they're looking for is for us to keep our promises and to do the simple things, like cutting spending and being responsible.

We're only one of a few states that have maintained our Triple-A bond rating from the major rating agencies.

Sometimes, people forget my record of fiscal conservatism on major issues in the state legislature. The greatest example is my voting against the pension borrowing scheme in 1997.

Back home in Maine people tend to think that there should be a balance between money coming in and money going out in their own lives, in their businesses and the Federal government.

Let us have the courage to stop borrowing to meet continuing deficits. Revenues must cover expenditures by one means or another. Any government, like any family, can, for a year, spend a little more than it earns. But you know and I know that a continuation of the habit means the poor house.

Actively search for spending bills that I can veto as a sign of … financial stewardship.

Washington, D.C., could learn a few budget lessons from Florida. The contrast between our state and the nation's capital is remarkable.

I was fortunate, I guess, to be part of some good fiscal discipline in the Bush administration. The budget I put forward was a balanced budget.

We are absolutely going to have to provide fiscal security to people; in other words, we are going to have to show the country and the world that the country can live within its means.

Some states like Nebraska have thus far responsibly managed their budgets, even in tough times, and I could not ask Nebraskans to pay for poor governance elsewhere.

We can't do everything with a budget, but we can put the country on much sounder financial footing.

In the private sector we budget for rainy days or offset unexpected expenditures with spending cuts and the same principles should apply to Congress.

It's no accident that Montana is the most fiscally prudent state in the nation.

We don't have a revenue problem in Annapolis. We have a spending problem we need to control.