Mitch Daniels Quotations

Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards, commissions, and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time, money, and energy far beyond any real contribution they make.

Our educational results lag behind other states, and other nations, but worse still, behind the potential of the kids and the devoted teachers in our classrooms.

Every citizen who stops smoking, or loses a few pounds, or starts managing his chronic disease with real diligence, is caulking a crack for the benefit of us all.

One thing that came home traveling the state was how frustrated it is, ... People down here felt that Indianapolis didn't pay attention to them. But people in Angola felt the same and in Evansville, too. A large part of my job is to get people feeling they have a larger shared destiny and objectives.

We cannot achieve a top-tier economy without a top-tier transportation system, ... To make sure that no Hoosier community is left behind, we must make major moves and bring into being a system of roads, bridges, rail lines, ports and airports second to none.

If they don't act, I would ask the legislature to review it again.

I would think that humanitarian aid to Americans ought to come right at the top of priority lists, ... I, for one, would support all the aid that makes sense to help these places get back together. And if that means that lesser priorities -- and there are plenty that they spend federal tax dollars on out there (in Washington) -- need to take a back seat for a while, that's probably what they should do.

I am compelled to note that Father Jenkins is off to a somewhat shaky start. He has violated the first rule of all great leaders, which is to never follow a superstar.

If it doesn't look like a solid gold (dollar total), ... then we won't do it.

Businesses pick not just a locality but a state, ... We are not going to give away the state but we are getting positive feed back on our efforts. We want to provide not just incentives but efficiency in the process of getting reviews done and decisions made.

I-69, on the plans we found when we arrived here, wouldn't happen until the mid-2030s and that's just simply unacceptable, ... It's clear to us that it can only happen if it is partially defrayed through tolls.

I am honored to be summoned to service by President-elect Bush and look forward to joining him in making bipartisan progress on the issues important to Americans. The federal surplus is a hard-earned accomplishment that belongs to the American people, and I am pleased to help the president-elect ensure that it is used for responsible goals.

is as integrated and interdependent as it has ever been.

I said, 'You can't be here having lunch with me, man!' ... But I told him that could be one heck of a story. The kid could be saying later on, 'While I was born, my dad was busy because he was having lunch with the governor.'

I think this is a matter for local decision-making and local consensus and that seems to be what is happening,

It does appear that some very serious people are going to give this a very serious look.

I think that the Board of Education ought to revisit this issue,

Those are not particularly the ones we're looking at here, but we have to be careful with duplication of that kind.

We had more laughs and more fun going through this than I would ever have foreseen. ... Unfortunately, as we just reminded each other, what happens on the road stays on the road.

The process is to stimulate questions of whether we are aiming high enough, ... I want us to accept the idea that acceptable performance should be nothing less than great.

We recognize the federal government plays a very important role in researching cures for disease, and, therefore, our budget increases the NIH budget for 2002 by $2.8 billion, the largest increase in that department's history,

We are ready to do whatever can be done. I am happy to place transportation capabilities of the Guard at federal disposal, if that would be helpful.

We owe it to Hoosier taxpayers to look for every opportunity to save money, ... State government does not need one vehicle for every three employees, or 20 aircraft. These vehicle auctions alone have returned more than $1.5 million to state government, but the greater savings are in operations and maintenance no longer necessary.

We stand to gain up to several thousand more jobs at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service center, ... and the commission listened to our recommendations for Crane and saved half of the jobs that were recommended for transfer elsewhere.

We've already broke ground on three new plants and plan several more in the coming years,

And, the time has come to stop penalizing Indiana businesses through our quirky treatment of time itself. If it were just a matter of the rest of the world's laughing at us, I'd say let them laugh. But the loss of Hoosier jobs and income is no laughing matter.

Courts recognized Mr. Baird as suffering from mental illness at the time he committed the murders, and Indiana Supreme Court Justice Ted Boehm recently wrote that Mr. Baird is 'insane in the ordinary sense of the word.' It is difficult to find reasons not to agree, ... However, I reached today's decision without substituting my judgment for others on the ambiguous issue of Mr. Baird's degree of insanity. To me, it suffices to note that, had the sentence of life without parole been available in 1987, the jury and the State would have imposed it with the support of the victims' families.

We are a state of people who speak plainly. We are a state of people who get to the point. Let me try to do both this evening, right now.

Washington is overrun by interests who want to take an ever larger share of taxpayer dollars for their causes, ... They put their pet programs, however ineffective, duplicative, obsolete or unimportant, ahead of larger national goals.

When you multiply that 43 cents by three meals a day, times 365 days a year for 26,000 prisoners, you're talking about a lot of money, ... I'm just for what works.

Yes, we hired an out-of-state firm to run it, but it created 300 jobs in a hard-hit county and saved us $6 million a year we were paying to Kentucky to house our prisoners, ... I have no theological view about privatization, but I believe we should look at competition or contracting when looking at services the government should be providing. What is the most effective way?

A straight answer now is that I don't believe it would be a responsible step, ... The state is still coming out of bankruptcy, and it would not provide dramatic relief to any individual.

The state of our state is far from sound. The state of our state needs serious attention. The foundation is still firm, but major repairs are overdue.

The state of our state needs serious attention.

I've said often that I think the practice is not a good practice. Just because I've changed seats, it hasn't changed my point of view.

There will definitely be some restraint, and even cuts in terms of government's involvement and subsidy of corporations.

We think the 4.9 percent increase is a good number, ... It's a big increase, although it does begin to moderate the runaway binge levels of spending growth that have characterized the last few years.

To make the economic impact that I think Indiana's capable of we have to do a lot of things large and small, ... We weren't labeled the Crossroads of America for nothing.

We have emptied every coffee can in the backyard and maxed out all the credit cards. When your past due bills exceed your cash on hand, when your month-in, month-out expenses far exceed the size of your paycheck, when your once-hefty savings have all been run through, the average family knows what to call it.

a critical first step in bringing President Bush's budget to fruition. We look forward to working with the Budget Committee and the Congress to make these priorities law.

A typical occupant of his office would have said, 'Give 'em everything they want,'

Revenues, tax payments to the federal government -- which generally rise and fall, historically have risen and fallen with the economy and with economic growth -- have been weaker than we expected. And this is due, apparently, almost entirely, to what I will call stock market-related income,

Folks at Treasury believe that some folks will go ahead and pay it (this year) anyway, ... Didn't get the memo, I guess, but that's the answer.

Adding these factors together, it is regrettably my conclusion that we are unlikely to return to balance in the federal accounts before possibly fiscal '05. That is, in the next two years things will have to break right for us to do that,

In many ways, I think it's time for Indiana to lead,

I'm back to make sure the state is doing all it can to begin the process of reconstruction,

I'm just here because I'm hopeful of getting citizens of west-central Indiana and all of Indiana excited about it,

I hope you're as excited as I am about making major moves,

No, and of course they shouldn't. We just got here, and there's no way to know.

Everybody wants to find some way to be helpful and there is no state at this point that has stepped forward more boldly than ours, ... That's like Hoosiers.

I try to take the same message everywhere I go, ... We're all in this together in Indiana.

Nothing will ever be more confusing than the world we're leaving behind,

If you've walked the ground down there as I have many times, you see the economic potential of that corner of the state is really terrific, ... This one project alone will have one of the highest returns of all the major moves we're suggesting.

By far, the highest percentage tax reduction will go to those working Americans in the lower brackets,

The retail examples that are confronting us are different, ... They are gigantic boxes that maintain enormous inventories of sporting and other goods.

It's what we consider one of a handful of the most important projects. We're going to make it happen as fast as we can.

And overhanging all our difficulties is the simple, brute fact that our state's public finances are in ruin. We have outspent our income year after year.

These are areas where we are already strong and can bring money into some of the hardest hit areas of the state. We've got to quit treating agriculture as some relic from the past and realize it still has a real economic upside.

There's a missing 'r' in the critical word 'pantry,' ... I feel it essential to confront this error head on and set the record straight. I have never, in all our years of marriage, come across my wife with cheddar cheese in her pantry without the 'r.'

It's not something I'd say never to, ... But at this point, I just don't see it providing meaningful relief -- a few cents a gallon relief that would accrue to the wealthy as well as the less-fortunate.

It's a real privilege I've discovered comes with having a job like this, ... If you take the time to just spend a full minute with someone rather than five seconds, you've become part of a really memorable experience for them.

As you know, Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) provisions require that firms seeking to do business with the government have a satisfactory record of business ethics and integrity. Consideration should be given to the initiation of suspension or debarment proceedings for all, or a part, of Arthur Andersen and Enron as appropriate.

A survey shows that nobody would pay a toll to go to Evansville.

This particular zone seems to have extraordinary assets well beyond that in any other zone, ... But there's a process that has to start to secure those assets so they can be used for the benefit of the area.

There will be people here who will be without permanent housing for a good while,

The report we've issued this morning confirms that the nation has entered an era of solid surpluses, surpluses on the order of $160 billion, despite an economy that's been weak now for over a year and in decline for that time.

We have 50 programs for the homeless sprawling across eight departments of government, ... Late Edition.

We found too large a percentage of procurement dollars, especially for professional services, were going out of state, ... We now look not only at value and price but where are the people who will be doing the work.

We four, we were thrown together for days, and though we had very little sleep, we had more laughs and fun going through this than I'd ever foreseen.

I confess I was an original fervent believer in this concept, ... I was sad to see it has been a failure in the state of Indiana.

However, I reach today's decision without substituting my judgment for others on the ambiguous issue of Mr. Baird's degree of insanity,

I don't want to go around beating up on small business people around Indiana who I think are just scrambling to try to serve their customers, ... If we ever see any credible evidence of somebody abusing the system, then we'll act. But, I've been looking at it every day and the Attorney General doesn't report it and I don't see it.

I can only vouch for her character, her personal qualities of compassion and thoughtfulness and intellect, ... My sense is her legal career makes it plain that she would see herself as a judge and not a legislator on the bench, which I personally think is appropriate and important.

Government does not create jobs, it only creates the conditions that make jobs more or less likely.

He can answer questions and point out how very much better the toll road will be in their hands, and how people's legitimate questions do have good answers.

Our morbidly obese federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric surgery.

Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.

If our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.'

When they call the slightest spending reductions 'painful', we will say 'If government spending prevents pain, why are we suffering so much of it?' And 'If you want to experience real pain, just stay on the track we are on.'

Every successful enterprise has a very clear strategic purpose.

[Obama's reelection] would subject the country to what might be a fatal last dose of statism.

No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others.

Our first thought is always for those on life's first rung, and how we might increase their chances of climbing.

We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in.

We are taking challenges and turning them into opportunities by developing homegrown, local energy production to become independent from foreign sources.

The president wasn't dragged anywhere, ... In reality, I think, it was his opposition which was dragged upstairs one step at a time from zero to this number that was very close to what the president proposed.

The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing.

Our fiscal ruin and resulting loss of world leadership will, in [liberals'] eyes, be not a tragic event but a desirable one.

The perverse presumption that places the burden of proof on the challenger of spending must be inverted, back to the rule that applies elsewhere in life: 'Prove to me why we should.

I took a vow of political celibacy.

I refer to the debt - the new red menace. This time consisting of ink.

We must not falsely teach American history in our schools. We have a law requiring state textbook oversight to guard against frauds like Zinn, and it was encouraging to find that no Hoosier school district had inflicted his book on its students,

The president's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars.

If freedom's best friends cannot unify around a realistic, actionable program of fundamental change, one that attracts and persuades a broad majority of our fellow citizens, big change will not come

We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government

When business leaders ask me what they can do for Indiana, I always reply: 'Make money. Go make money. That's the first act of corporate citizenship. If you do that, you'll have to hire someone else, and you'll have enough profit to help one of those non-profits we're so proud of.'

Sure, things could always have been done better, but I just wish people would drop their political hammers for a few weeks, as happened in 2001, and work on the problem at hand

There is nothing inconsistent about having a conservative outlook and being vigorous.

We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

I certainly believe in limited government but protecting children against injury abuse is certainly inside my sphere of things that the government should do.