Jacob Lew's Quotes

In the budget, the president will call for a five-year freeze on discretionary spending other than for national security. This will reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade and bring this category of spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.

Social Security is something that we need to deal with, because people who are working today, who will retire in the future, people who are retired today, they have a right - and it's part of the compact that they can depend on their benefits. We should fix the long-term funding problem of Social Security because that's the right thing to do.

The reason to deal with Social Security is that it is a system where we have a tradition and history of making sure it is solidly funded for 75 years. At the moment, we look out and we see it is solidly funded until 2037.

The transition from tyranny to democracy is very hard. The Syrian people have to handle this in a way that works in Syria. And the brutality of the Assad regime is unacceptable.

We cannot win the future, expand the economy and spur job creation if we are saddled with increasingly growing deficits. That is why the president's budget is a comprehensive and responsible plan that will put us on a path toward fiscal sustainability in the next few years - a down payment toward tackling our challenges in the long term.

Businesses make decisions based on what they are seeing in their order books.

Congress should get the job done.

Europe is trying to get its fiscal house in order.

Every president since George Washington has taken executive privilege seriously. Every Republican president has.

Historically, the responsibility for voting on the debt limit has gone to the party in the majority.

I can't speak to the differences within the Catholic Church.

I think that for the next short period of time, our No. 1 priority is Congress needs to do its work and extend the payroll tax cut.

I think the thing that the American people want is for the divisive debate on health care to stop.

I think there is a shared sense of urgency in Washington on fiscal issues.

I've never seen a constructive Social Security debate that started with one side digging in, in one place and another side digging into another.

If you don't define the problem you'll never reach a painful solution.

If you have a student who graduates from college and they don't have a job, they are now able to stay on their family health plan.

It is time for the general fund to pay the Social Security fund back.

It's going to be true that anything that reduces the federal deficit will have somebody unhappy.

Most Americans want health insurance.

Raising the debt limit on some levels is a ministerial act. It doesn't involve any new spending.

Taxpayers can go online and find out more about the way their government works than ever before.

The budget is not just a collection of numbers, but an expression of our values and aspirations.

There are lots of ways to work together.

There is a very serious fiscal-policy question of, 'Are we running our overall fiscal policy such that we as a government can pay our bills?'

There's a lot of trust being built up. I think we have a lot of work ahead of us.