"Johnson makes a major contribution to our national debates, as did Paul before him. The libertarian perspective is valuable, important and deserves to be considered by all voters. It is also fair to note that Johnson, like Paul before him, has won a fair share of support from younger voters who are the future of the nation. If someone had asked me to predict who would emerge as the leading alternative to Clinton in a poll of respected economists, I would never have guessed that the runner-up to Clinton would be Johnson, and not Trump."
Gary Earl Johnson is an American businessman and politician who served as the 29th governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003 as a member of the Republican Party. He has been a member of the Libertarian Party since 2011 and was the party's nominee in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. He was also the Libertarian nominee in the 2018 U.S. Senate election in New Mexico.
"Ultimately, taxes are being paid for by your and my freedom because we have to spend more time to make the money to pay for those taxes. The current reality is that with a deficit that is going to double in the next eight years is that taxes, currently, as it stands right now, taxes are going up, unless there becomes a real movement to understand that we should be reducing taxes and not allowing taxes to increase."
"It [America] was founded and I hope that it resurges the notion of liberty, the notion of freedom, the notion of a system that treats everyone equally. I think we move further and further away from that not closer and closer and that if we could all focus on that that would be the focus and we could actually accomplish that. And that’s what I talk about all the time. As governor of New Mexico I like to think that on a daily basis it was about a system that was gonna treat everybody equally as opposed to politics which you know is hit and miss and it’s politics it’s who you know as opposed to a system that provides that equality."
"I think that the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end. But when we’ve aligned ourselves with — when we’ve supported the opposition of the — the Free Syrian Army is also coupled with the . And then the fact that we’re also supporting the Kurds and this is — it’s just — it’s just a mess. And that this is the result of regime change that we end up supporting. And, inevitably, these regime changes have led a less-safe world. ... That has to be the solution, is joining hands with Russia to bring — to bring this civil war to an end."
"Everything that I did as Governor, and everything that I think needs to occur right now in the Federal Government, needs to be a cost-benefit analysis. What are we spending our money on, and what are we getting for what were spending? I am of the belief that we are on the verge of a financial collapse. We can not repay fourteen trillion dollars in debt if were spending one point six trillion dollars more than were taking in this year and years to come. That is not sustainable... We landed on the moon, we can balance the federal budget. And that means cutting forty-three cents out of every federal dollar that were currently spending."
"BRAC, in the mid-90s suggested that 20 percent more U.S. bases, in fact, could be cut. That hasn’t taken place because the political will hasn’t been there to accomplish that. We would bring that to the table, a 20 percent reduction in military spending."
"I dont drink, Stephen, Ive smoked marijuana, I choose not to smoke marijuana, but when I smoked it the first time, you know what I thought when I smoked it the first time? I thought, "the government lied." I just think that the government should tell the truth when it comes to these drugs. Look, marijuana is safer than alcohol, and dont trust me on this but the , five years ago, voted on the decriminalization of marijuana on a campaign based on marijuana being safer than alcohol."