Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Federal Government has become too big and too expensive, and it has been this way for quite a long time. It is not without its impact. It has been borrowing and spending far too much money and doing too many things even before the COVID-19 global pandemic, but this emergency has really shown how badly we need to return to some semblance of federalism, some semblance of Federal restraint with respect to what it does and particularly what it spends. I say this because emergencies, national emergencies, will arise from time to time. It happens. And when those things happen from time to time, the Federal Government will need to expend some significant resources and borrow money. That is exactly why we should not be running multitrillion-dollar deficits at the top of the business cycle to begin with. During a period of significant economic expansion, not a recession, we were already spending more than we had. It makes it much harder for us to respond, be nimble, and do the things we need to do. This has been a long-term problem because Washington, DC, has been centralizing political power and political decision making now for generations. It has not made the Federal Government more effective but, rather, weaker and less effective. It has made it slower, less nimble, more rigid, and inflexible.…”