Quotes from Jack Lew

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

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

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

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.

Congress should get the job done.

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

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

I've been really privileged to work for two presidents - President Obama and President Clinton - who are both people of faith, who value faith, and who respect that others have the same feelings in their own lives.

Europe is trying to get its fiscal house in order.

I think it's very important not to confuse the importance of dealing with Social Security in the long term with these short-term deficit reduction challenges. They're different issues.

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.

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?'

We have to reduce the burden placed on our economy by years of deficits and debt.

There are lots of ways to work together.

I think there's no higher calling in terms of a career than public service, which is a chance to make a difference in people's lives and improve the world.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

We obviously would like to get unemployment as low as we possibly can.

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