Mick Mulvaney Quotes

A mature welfare state is always broke.

People like entitlements. That's why we spend so much on them.

Americans never would alter the way entitlement programs are funded or education administered without serious study and widespread debate.

If the government mandates anything with a price tag on it, then it ought to fund the project.

When government grows, it breaks the family.

No major entitlement, once it has been implemented, has ever been unwound.

I've seen it with my own eyes: When government takes money from the poor and the middle class, everyone suffers.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

We have a dangerous tendency. Roughly half the people in the country pay little of no taxes. These people who are disproportionate beneficiaries of government programs are in favor of more government programs.

Any government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

Government can’t deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch.

Welfare is killing this country.

In the old days the problems of government were few and political, now they are many and are economic and sociological ...

It cannot be said that we dislike paying taxes for the welfare of those less well off than we are, so we develop a draping cover of economic and social theory.

If ever there were a place where people not only tend not to face economic facts, but it's almost their purpose not to face economic facts, it's Washington.

Too many people on the Left think that, when you move a chunk of money away from people for entitlements, that the money magically reappears and that discretionary spending will be unaffected.

The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government.

The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them.

You've got the Democratic Party that now depends on more government spending and actual building the dependence on government in order to increase their political party.

Putting the budget ahead of the policy is the wrong way to do it. It's too often the way it's done in Washington.

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

Big government doesn't help the middle class, it buries it.

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.'

The government has become a mechanism for distributing largess, and your census form is your ticket.

I often quote Ronald Reagan, who is pretty close to my favorite President ever, I will have to say that, but one of my favorite remarks he ever made was that when you look at Federal programs, there is nothing so close to eternal life on Earth as a Federal Government program.