David Walker

We have to have a robust discussion about what it is going to take to save the country.

The cruellest tax of all is inflation. You have no choice, you don't vote, it just happens, right.

Believe it or not, I am 65 years old. Congress has passed timely budget and appropriation bills four times in 65 years. That is an F minus.

I think the American -- we need to have a discussion with the American people about how much universal health care is appropriate, affordable and sustainable.

I think they'll reconcile. I mean, the fact is the Speaker has a role to play and oversee the convention and he has an obligation to support the Republican nominee whoever that is.

If the overhead was 25 percent lower in the Pentagon, we'd be 50 percent more productive.

I think frankly what the president ought to think about doing with regard to the Affordable Care Act is that he ought to use executive powers to not enforce the penalties associated with the individual mandate for a year.

It's time to get real.

I believe that there is an opportunity that you can get administration support for something along these lines.

This is not a collective bargaining problem. I mean, people ought to have the right to bargain, and we're not proposing to touch that at all.

We need civil service reform. You need budget reform.

I would respectfully suggest that for the benefit of the United States and for the benefit of the American people the answer is yes.

Let's learn from history. Let's learn from others.

We created a United States Congress to do exactly these things, and at some point aren't we selling our Republic short...

A hundred years ago the Federal Government was 2 percent of GDP. Now it's 23 percent.

I think we can get there without going to a parliamentary system, but I do think that we need political reforms as well as policy reforms.

The power resides with the Congress of the United States and the President of the United States.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is America. We can't have roads and bridges falling apart. We're better than that.

If we cannot be effective and efficient in what we're doing, we might as well go and play golf.

The single greatest threat to our Nation's security is our own fiscal irresponsibility and mounting debt burdens.

I think there's a way to bridge this and for both sides to save face. We ought to be trying to get a credible down payment and a one-year extension to get a grand bargain.

I think they're way too involved in partisan politics, not enough listening to the American people.

There is only one kind of mandate that occurred in the election in November, because the public returned the Republicans to the House, the Democrats to the Senate, and President Obama to the White House.

You can't spend a lot more money than you take in and charge it to the credit card and not expect to have a day of reckoning.