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The American people, in their own families, they understand that you have to do that. You have to make the tough decisions. You have to get your budget. You have got to put it in order. And they expect their elected officials and their leaders to do likewise.

We campaigned on the fact that we were going to have to take difficult decisions because of the state of the public finances. When we got into government we discovered that actually the public finances were in an even worse state than we thought.

Sometimes you have to make tough decisions to hold the line on spending.

The people who know personal finance hide the money very carefully.

And if we make the process political, if we start to make it personal, we're actually going to frustrate good public policy, in terms of managing this money.

What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.

Financial literacy is an issue that should command our attention because many Americans are not adequately organizing finances for their education, healthcare and retirement.

When you have a country that's been accustomed to government spending at a certain level, it is really hard to ratchet it back.

Sound public finances are the essential foundation on which to construct a better-balanced economy from the wreckage of Labour's boom and bust. But it is economic growth that will create the jobs and the prosperity for the future and enable us to pay down Labour's debt.

Every family in America knows they have to do a budget. Every small business in America knows they have to do a budget. Every local government, every state, knows they have to do a budget.