Miriam Defensor-Santiago Quotes

The budget is tight, and that is exactly where we want it to be and where we need it to be.

We're going to have to control the spending of government.

The budget evolved from a management tool into an obstacle to management.

Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow.

This time, instead of moving oceans and healing planets, let's get our bills in order and pay down the debt so we control our own future.

My focus on the budget, though, has played second fiddle to what I believe is even more important - creating jobs.

A budget in difficult times can and must serve the people for whom it is designed.

Budgets can make or break reputations and governments.

How well we spend education dollars is just as important as how much we spend.

A budget is a moral document.

Whoever owns the means of credit controls the industrial life of the nation.

The best deficit reduction program is a growing economy.

There must be some flexibility in the budget. You cannot have too much discipline.

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.

A behemoth budget does not mean there is much discretion in allocating it.

Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget?

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarcely be folly in that of a great kingdom.

A budget must be more than a ledger sheet. It should have a heart and serve as a blueprint for a better quality of life for all residents.

The necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.

If you don’t have the budget, you can’t get anything done. That’s why bureaucrats are always fighting about budgets.

The debt ceiling serves no useful purpose.

We should not be strangling ourselves economically by not utilizing the resources we have been given or by putting them off-limits.

China is still the fastest growing economy in the world, but we need to learn how to use money in a better way, and it's about quality, not quantity.

We should improve economic guidance and management as demanded by the developing reality.

In the private sector, you have a budget and you stick to it.