Leadership Quote by John Spratt

"We developed during the 1990s a series of budget process rules that helped us bring to heel these deficits, diminishing every year and moving the budget so into surplus"

John Spratt, Politician

About this Quote

A politician bragging about rules is never just a civics lesson; its a bid for authorship. Spratt is reaching back to the 1990s - the last era in American politics when "budget process rules" could sound like a shared national accomplishment rather than a partisan weapon. The phrasing is telling: "developed" and "rules" foreground technocracy, not ideology. He wants the listener to picture deficits as a problem you can discipline with procedure, not a consequence of value choices about taxes, war, or the safety net.

"Bring to heel" does the heavy lifting. Its a hunters metaphor, turning deficits into a misbehaving animal and the lawmakers into competent handlers. That language flatters governance itself: the system worked because adults imposed structure. It also quietly preempts the usual critique that fiscal turnarounds are accidents of a booming economy. By crediting "process" and "diminishing every year", Spratt frames the surplus as earned, incremental, and reproducible.

Context matters: in the 1990s, PAYGO rules and discretionary spending caps helped align political incentives with arithmetic, and the Clinton-era surpluses became a touchstone for centrist Democrats arguing that social investment and fiscal restraint can coexist. Spratt, a long-time budget insider, is speaking to that legacy - and to its fragility. The subtext is warning as much as nostalgia: stop treating deficits like background noise, respect the guardrails, and you can get back to surplus-land. The promise is order; the pitch is credibility.

Quote Details

Topic	Money
Source	Help us find the source
Cite

More Quotes by John Add to List

About the Author

John Spratt (born November 1, 1942) is a Politician from USA.

17 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

"The budget enforcement rules of the 1990s were an important part of getting the budget back into balance. It was done on a bipartisan basis. Those pay-as-you-go rules were tested and they worked. We are now in a one-party system, and we have thrown them out"

Melissa Bean, Politician

"The financial report makes it very clear that if we got into honest budgeting today, that in fact we would find ourselves with a much larger deficit than we have today"

Jim Costa, Politician

"It is time we passed a balanced budget amendment and return this government to limited spending"

Newt Gingrich, Politician

"Well, I think the president has clearly submitted us a tight budget, but it's what's called for if we're going to get spending under control and keep the economy moving in the right direction, with economic growth and job creation activity"

Thad Cochran, Politician

"The important aspect as we look at this budget, and as we look at previous budgets, is the budget system - what I'm trying to get at is changing budgeting itself in Wisconsin"

Scott McCallum, Politician

"I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas"

Margaret J. Wheatley, Writer

"While there are no easy solutions to this problem, the Deficit Reduction Act gets us started in the right direction by beginning with the most obvious, commonsense reforms to save taxpayer dollars"

Jim Ryun, Athlete

"The budget evolved from a management tool into an obstacle to management"

Frank Carlucci, Politician

"We're focused on doing the things that make the economy perform well, and as you do that, reduce deficits, for one, very important; secondly, keep growth rates high, very important"

John W. Snow, Economist

"The first year of the Bush administration we used up all of the surplus and ended up just with the Social Security and Medicare surplus, and each year worse than the year before"

Bobby Scott, Politician

"You want to balance the budget in this country? We change the salary structure for Congress and the President. Every year they don't balance the budget, we don't pay them"

Daniel Keys Moran, Writer

Daniel Keys Moran

"What you really remember at the beginning was that you have to throw a budget together. We made some terrible mistakes at the beginning in my own budget that took us at least a year to catch up on"

Donna Shalala, Public Servant

"We can't have deficit spending in Texas. You have to balance your budget every two years"

Rick Perry, Politician

Rick Perry

"The deficit - the U.S. knows our deficit is too large. We are committed to bringing it down. We are bringing it down. The deficit came in for fiscal year '05 at considerably below where it was the prior year"

John W. Snow, Economist

"A budget should reflect the values and priorities of our nation and its people"

Mary Landrieu, Politician

"For one thing, one of the wonderful things that we now have is instead of the huge budget surpluses that President Clinton left us with, we now have these huge deficits that we're going to be facing into the future"

Geraldine Ferraro, Politician

"The cold harsh reality is that we have to balance the budget"

Michael Bloomberg, Politician

"We're failing when it comes to controlling spending"

Lindsey Graham, Politician

"We're on the verge of a financial collapse unless we balance the budget, and that means some really, really tough decisions"

Gary Johnson

"To reduce deficit spending and our enormous debt, you reign in spending. You cut the budget. You don't take more from the private sector and grow government with it. And that's exactly what Obama has in mind with this expiration of Bush tax cuts proposal of his"

Sarah Palin, Politician

Sarah Palin