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“Everyone thinks there’s a lot, but there’s nothing that a majority wants to cut. The average person doesn’t want less government. They just want the government to cost less.”

— David Wessel Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)

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More quotes by David Wessel

That’s another problem with budgeting: the public makes woefully wrong assumptions about virtually every aspect of it.

Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)

Eliminating the federal workforce entirely would have pared the federal budget deficit in 2011 by only one-third.

Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)

In classical tragedy, this is known as the denouement. In Washington, it could be just farce.

Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)

The overarching lesson: Bringing the deficit down to sustainable levels takes big changes. Little ones won’t do it.

Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)

Today, the idea that a president could appeal to a mixed-party center to win approval of any measure seems as quaint is a typewriter.

Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012)

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Wessel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.