Pat Toomey Quotes

We have a serious structural deficit problem. And it needs to be addressed. The president is trying to address it through reforms of Social Security, but the problem is there with other entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

When you're talking about long-term deficit reduction, $4 trillion worth, entitlement reform needs to be part of it.

Trillions of dollars in out-of-control entitlement spending cannot be remedied by cuts in NASA, or even in the entire discretionary budget, defense included. Rather, the financial bleeding needs to be staunched where the hole is and nowhere else.

And in terms of entitlement reforms, we have to save them from themselves, because if we don't reform social security and we don't reform Medicare, they're going to actually implode.

To cut the federal budget without cutting entitlements is like giving up chocolate-chip cookies and then deciding it's OK to eat the ones that don't have any nuts.

When you talk about entitlement programs, it's not just about - it's not about cutting those programs. It is about saving those programs. Those programs are on a path of fiscal unsustainability.

Democrats need to stand strong against any efforts to cut benefits to Social Security and Medicare.

By making bold cuts in spending and commonsense entitlement reforms, we will make our government simpler, smaller, and smarter.

When you talk about raising that debt limit, the only way that I would ever support raising the debt limit if we also talk about budgetary controls on the federal government, capping its spending, how do we deal with the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid problems, because they cannot continue to run on auto-pilot.

The true enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who defend an imploding status quo.

I'd hate to paint with a broad brush, but many Democrats don't feel that we have a crisis in entitlements, and Republicans do.

You know, even people who talk about cutting spending and they go 'That's not the spending that I was actually talking about that you're supposed to be cutting.' Well, we have to be looking across the board.

I think that retiring the baby boomers is going to be one of the great challenges in America, that you cannot make fiscal sense out of the future of our children without taking on entitlements.

Not too many years ago, both parties acknowledged that our entitlement commitments were a sword hanging over our heads. But when President George W. Bush tried to begin discussions on Social Security reform, Democrats ridiculed and demonized him and told seniors he was after their nest eggs.

I think that all areas of the budget have to be scrubbed. Clearly the entitlement issues have to be reformed and that's an issue that's going to require I think some strong bipartisan cooperation and leadership.

There are two important things to remember about 'entitlements': They are hugely popular programs for a very good reason, and actual sensible 'reform' would mean improving them, not sacrificing them at the altar of 'fiscal responsibility.'

Any politician that says no tax revenue or zero spending cuts does not deserve reelection. Our hole is so deep in this country with the debt and the debt service, the interest on that debt, before the big expenses come for Social Security and Medicare - for we baby boomers in a few years - that everything has to be on the table.

I think we'll build a consensus for action on Social Security reform which will reduce that long-term unfunded obligation and put the system on a sustainable basis.

The Missourians I hear from just don't buy the idea that the only way to tackle the national debt is to drastically alter Medicare and Social Security.

We're going to have to raise revenues in some form or fashion, and we're going to have to cut spending, including entitlements of all kind, including the military. We all know this. Lets get on with it.

Make no mistake, if the payroll-tax cut is extended, it will become permanent. Social Security will become another welfare program as the tie between what someone pays and what they receive gets broken.

I do not intend to dispute in any way the need for defence cuts and the need for government spending cuts in general. I do not share a not in my backyard approach to government spending reductions.

The question is: How do we reduce spending from 25% of GDP, which is where Obama put us? The focus is on total government spending. Can we bring it down, in a reasonable and politically acceptable way? That's what the Paul Ryan plan does. It puts us on a gradual reform path to reducing the size of government.

I am going to give the American people a huge helping of unbridled truth: that we can't continue to spend what we are spending, that we can't avoid entitlement reform because we are afraid of third rail politics.

Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter.