As Secretary of Defense my job would be much easier if I didn't have to put up with [budget] cuts.
The left wants to protect social programs, the right wants to protect defense and intelligence spending and all the rest. I say the defense and intelligence world will be better off with a smaller budget. They would be less encumbered by bloat and able to maneuver the way they used to be able and not trip over themselves.
How does a government reduce expenditures? To be absolutely flat about it, 99 per cent of it is accomplished by putting people out of work. Now that is a tough way to say it, but it is a fact.
I am a governor who left office with a smaller general fund budget than when we started.
Reducing the budget for Amtrak makes no sense unless the Administration is prepared to implement a reform strategy which can be supported by the budget request.
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.
America's military is second to none in the world. We're blessed with terrific soldiers, and extraordinary technology and intelligence. But the idea of a trillion dollars in cuts through sequestration and budget cuts to the military would change that.
Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.
I've enjoyed programming on NPR, but 'we're broke' and therefore all spending must be reduced.
Cut defense spending as part of cutting all federal spending.
Now remember, we've already done more than a billion dollars worth of cuts. We've already done that. So we need to get some credit for that.
The closest thing you ever get to a cut is a decrease in the rate of increase of government spending.
The way to cut the military budget is to go to the commanding officer of each military facility and tell him he will get another star if he cuts his budget, and we will be trampled in the stampede to save money.
Roll back federal spending to 2008 levels.
Any move to reduce government spending is a positive for the economy.
I am in favor of reducing all budget items. But the item I don't want to reduce is the pension expenditure because it affects the weakest part of society.
Were not cutting the budget simply for the sake of sounder financial management. This is only a first step toward returning power to the states and communities, only a first step toward reordering the relationship between citizen and government.
When you cut a half-a-trillion dollars from the defense budget, it affects almost every area in the defense budget.
Every effort needs to be made to try and offset the costs of Katrina and Rita by reductions in other government programs, especially those that are wasteful, duplicative and ineffective.
I've put pencil to paper... and I've said I would cut spending, and I've said exactly where. Each one of my budgets has taken a meat axe to foreign aid, because I think we ought to quit sending it to countries that hate us.
It's discouraging how hard it is for a President to slice away large chunks of a $305 billion budget.
If sequestration takes place, that's going to be a great setback. We don't need to be having something like sequestration that's going to cause these job losses - over 170 million jobs that could be lost.
I’m a hawk, but I’m a cheap hawk. I want to cut the Defense budget by 20 percent.
I have fought against excessive spending my entire career. And I got plans to reduce and eliminate unnecessary and wasteful spending and if there's anybody here who thinks there aren't agencies of government where spending can be cut and their budgets slashed they have not spent a lot of time in Washington.
The Spending Control Act. It would recreate President Reagan's grace commission to have a bipartisan commission on how we reduce spending.
