Erik Prince Quotes

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

If we can't find cuts in the defense budget, we're not looking carefully enough.

My approach to cutting spending as president, is to do a ten percent across the board cut of all federal agencies, and then ask each of my new agency heads to find another ten percent by drilling down. That's what you do in business to come up with approximately 20 percent cuts for the first fiscal year budget.

Well, no American wants to in any way hurt our capabilities to national defense, but that doesn't mean an unlimited amount of money, and a blank check for anything they want at any time, for any purpose. Not at all.

Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.

It is being alleged that the Federal Government is 'cutting' spending. In fact, we are not 'cutting' anything. Defense spending under this budget would rise by 4.3 percent over last year. Other discretionary spending would also rise.

Being a defense hawk and a budget hawk are not mutually exclusive.

Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.

This nation can no longer tolerate the autonomous conduct of any single service. A waste of the resources of America in spendthrift defense is an invitation to disaster for America.

As Secretary of Defense my job would be much easier if I didn't have to put up with [budget] cuts.

Balanced budgets have a lot to do with National Defense.

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.

I’m a hawk, but I’m a cheap hawk. I want to cut the Defense budget by 20 percent.

We must go through every area of the federal budget to isolate waste and abandoned projects.

I am a governor who left office with a smaller general fund budget than when we started.

I have long maintained the military budget is not a jobs bill... and will continue to support the lowest budget possible.

Government must continue to live within its means.

The American people know that we cannot spend our way to prosperity.

Make no mistake: I will work with both Democrats and Republicans to cut wasteful spending and reduce our debt in a balanced, responsible way.

Defense spending as a share of the economy dropped significantly during the early 1990s, and that was one of the things, along with other policy changes, that put us back on the path to a balanced budget.

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.

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

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.

I'd be a lot more excited about eliminating earmarks if we reduced all of the spending by whatever the earmarks used to be, but nobody's, apparently, going to talk about doing that.

Bush has never sent over a balanced budget.