Mona Charen Quotes

After political crusades for 'affordable housing' ended up ruining the housing market and much of the economy with it, many of the same politicians are now carrying on a crusade for 'affordable health care.' But what you can afford has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of producing anything. Refusing to pay those costs means that you are just not going to continue getting the same quantity and quality - regardless of what any politician says or how well he says it.

If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.

You bet every member of Congress who votes for this bill ought to read it, read it thoroughly, and understand that what we're looking at here amounts to nothing more than a government takeover of our health care economy, paid for with nearly a trillion dollars in new taxes on individuals and small businesses. And it must be opposed.

And again, President Obama's health care plan really is another drag on the economy. Until we get Washington out of the way, this president's recovery is going to continue to rank dead last.

Government did get into the health care business in a big way in 1965 with Medicare, and later with Medicaid, and government already distorts the marketplace.

You'll have lower prices under deregulation than you will through regulation.

Health-care policy is choked by an aristocracy of special interests. If we don't take these groups on and rein in costs, health care will continue to bleed our economy white.

If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free.

I want to give consumers way more choices in health care. Choice and competition always drive down costs better than central control.

It's impossible for the government to curb property prices.

Don't spend more than you take in. Control your debt. Empower the private sector. We have 50 states out there that are laboratories of democracy. Why are we not empowering the states to find solutions to our problems, particularly health care, as opposed to looking to a one-size-fits-all solution from Washington, D.C.? That puzzles even me.

When the government mandates that everyone must buy a product, its sellers can, and will, increase its price, potentially without limit.

I've made it very clear that the government should get out of the business of trying to affect the markets, of trying to pick winners and losers.

What's going to happen, really on one issue specifically, to their health care, among some other things. And right now, Republicans don't have any legislative details or much in the way of answers, yet.

It's hard to overemphasize how important Ford's deregulation was. True, most of the benefits took years to unfold-rail freight rates, for example hardly budged at first. Yet deregulation set the stage for an enormous wave of creative destruction in the 1980s.

When Hillary Clinton talks about adding more restrictions and complexity to our financial system, as she did in her economic policy speech, it shows how clueless she is about how the economy actually works.

There is no such thing as a free market.

The minute you hear subsidies, I don't care what, if it's health care, buying cars, the minute you hear subsidies, you have to understand, whatever's going on here, it isn't market forces.

Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail. That is what we have done at one time or another to produce surpluses of wheat, of sugar, of butter, of many other commodities. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.

[E]conomic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics

I will undertake to prove that the present corn laws have been detrimental to the public, without being beneficial to the agricultural interest.

I have read a great deal of economic theory for over 50 years now, but have found only one economic "law" to which I can find NO exceptions: Where the State prevents a free market, by banning any form of goods or services, consumer demand will create a black market for those goods or services, at vastly higher prices. Can YOU think of a single exception to this law?

We can talk about republican or democratic approaches to the economy, but until you fix the student loan bubble - and that's where the real bubble is - and the tuition bubble, we don't have a chance. All this other stuff is shuffling deck-chairs on the Titanic.

This health-care plan is all about the destruction of the creation of wealth in America and the socialization of this country, and it won't work - never has anywhere else - and we're going to go to the mat here to see to it that they don't succeed.

Many politicians and pundits claim that the credit crunch and high mortgage foreclosure rate is an example of market failure and want government to step in to bail out creditors and borrowers at the expense of taxpayers who prudently managed their affairs. These financial problems are not market failures but government failure. ... The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy.