34 Quotes by Brian Riedl

There are precious few legislative days before the election.

Yes, it's true that earmarks are only 1 percent of all federal spending, but earmarks have a cultural effect on Congress that is much larger than their cost. It fuses Congress together with lobbyists and creates a culture of government spending as a means to re-election, which bleeds into other areas.

Mike Pence has done a fabulous job leading the Republican Study Committee. They have put out a realistic and credible and specific budget proposal to get spending under control when virtually no one else is talking about it.

Montana is getting more highway pork, but so is every other state.

More than anything else, this one program threatens the long-term federal budget.

Nearly all of their savings comes from this cut to total discretionary spending. That does nothing for the real long-term problem.

President Bush's pledge to halve the budget deficit by 2009 distracts policymakers from the real issue of unsustainable trends in long-term entitlement spending. The president's proposal to slow Medicare's 9% annual growth rate is a good fiscal step, but the budget does not propose enough immediate and bold reforms to the quickly growing entitlement programs that threaten to overwhelm the budget.

NASA represents something important in the national psyche. Given that, there isn't a lot of hunger to cut NASA substantially, nor to cripple their ability to explore space.

Most lawmakers are coming to the conclusion that the spending spree we're seeing right now is unsustainable.