You can provide better services for less if you get the federal government out of the way.
Every penny we spend comes from the taxpayer. We thus owe it to the taxpayer to work as hard managing that money wisely as the taxpayer must do to earn it in the first place.
To a certain extent, I have to be the president's bad cop from time to time. I have to look people in the eye and tell them, 'No, we don't have enough money for that.' That is not a very popular thing to do in Washington.
There is absolutely no way that the U.S. will ever default on its debt. We are not going to do that.
Too often in Washington, we only look at the recipient side: How does the budget affect either those who receive or don't receive benefits.
Infrastructure is sort of that good spending in the middle, where even if you do misallocate resources a little bit, you still have something to show for it. It's tangible; it may help economic growth and so forth.
We cannot have another experience like we've had in my freshman class, of people saying one thing and doing another.
My reputation is as a fiscal hawk. At least, I hope that it is.
We don't spend money properly in Washington, D.C. We jump these massive bills to massive bills.
It doesn't cost money to let people keep more of their own money. It costs money to spend money you don't have, but that's another issue.
Bad spending, to me, in terms of its economic benefit, would be wealth transfer payments. It's a misallocation of resources.
I would be embarrassed to tell you how many folks ran saying that they weren't going to spend a bunch of money, they weren't going to raise the debt ceiling, and then they went to Washington, D.C., and did exactly that.
My dad told me something long before I was in politics, and when your dad gives you advice every single day, eventually one or two of the things stick in your mind. And he said, don't believe what people say, believe what they do.
I think the government, if you measure it in terms of the dollars out the door, about 83 percent of the government stays open in a government shutdown. Social Security checks go out; military still exists. The FBI still chases bad guys. I think the consequences have been blown out of proportion.
There are jobs that American citizens will not do. We can talk about why that is. We can talk about how our welfare state is broken, how we encourage people not to work, but that doesn't help the farmer pick his peaches this summer.
I've never understood the allure of putting your name on a building that was built with taxpayers' money.
Remember what Obamacare gave you. Obamacare gave you insurance but not health care. A lot of folks who were technically insured either couldn't afford the premiums or couldn't afford the copay.
I believe, as a matter of principle, that the debt is a problem that must be addressed sooner rather than later. I also know that fundamental changes are needed in the way Washington spends and taxes if we truly want a healthy economy. This must include changing our government's long-term fiscal path, which is unsustainable.
When you grew up in a household where mom would keep the extra ketchup packets from McDonald's and keep them in a drawer just in case there came a day when you couldn't afford to buy ketchup anymore, that gets ingrained in you.
The White House would love to see Obamacare taken apart all at once, bit by bit, however we can do it.
