Theodore J. Forstmann Quotes

Hearing politicians tell us we can't afford a tax cut is like listening to a glutton tell you he can't afford a diet. In no other context do people talk about paying for money they don't have. I can't pay for your refusal to give me money because I need a yacht.

We need to have more taxes, not less, and we need the taxes we have, certainly, to provide services - for defense and education and health care. We should not cut money here in order to cut taxes.

It is day after day in this institution, borrow money, run up the debt, run up the deficits and then with a straight face say, we are going to repeal a tax that affects 1 percent of the American people, just 1 percent of the American people.

We have to deal with two issues. Spending and taxes.

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.

There's a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think its an investment.

There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down the taxes, and in election after election the people vote into power representatives who are as unable as they are unwilling to do anything about it.

If the US government spends 40 percent of the nation's income, as it does through either borrowing or taxes, that income is not available for people to spend. The deficit is an indirect method of taxation. Of course, politicians prefer to borrow instead of tax because then someone down the road has to deal with the consequences.

Coolidge thought budgets were virtuous. He had his econ straight. He didn't just cut taxes, he also cut the budget.

We're in a very Orwellian situation where when we - we've slashed defense. And we've raised taxes. And we consider $600 billion annual deficit success because it's not $1 trillion.

The message coming out of Washington, especially from our leftist politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress' appetite.

There's no reason to raise taxes. Taxes should be lower... The problem we have is that government spends too much, not that taxes are too low.

Government is just spending too much money.

When the country's indebtedness is so colossal and where the budget deficit is so huge, there is a moral obligation on people to pay their fair and reasonable dues.

Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.

If you ask people do you think that government should spend less money than what it takes in, most people agree with that.

If you raise taxes, it won't reduce the deficit. The other team will simply spend the resources.

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

... with a cash machine like an income tax, the state legislature will go wild and go on a spending spree.

Taxes are forever; spending cuts are transitory.

We want public services but we do not want to pay for them

it would be nice to have low taxes, but we have to pay our bills in this country.

Voters want conflicting things. They want a lot of government spending, but they don't want higher taxes.

People are taxed enough.

Government can only spend a dollar to help someone when it forcibly takes a dollar from someone else.