"My concern here is that the government can't seem to get off the dime."

I have the feeling we'll never get off the dime, otherwise, so far as this conversation goes.

"About time our artillery got off the dime," he said.

Something was awakened in them, an urgency to move their life forward, get off the dime.

Thus, to get off the dime came to mean "to get moving."

"Maybe they're finally going to get off the dime."

"If you guys would get off the dime, you could lay around camp and loaf a little bit, too."

The meaning of to get off the dime, as native speakers know, is "to start moving; to stop stalling."

"Those programs are just getting off the dime, and we need time to see what effect they're going to have," Mr. Smith said.

"The key question is will the state now get off the dime and work toward a solution that meets both environmental and water supply needs."

Arnold Schwarzenegger and other prominent Republicans are telling him to get off the dime.

WHY can't companies get off the dime?

H.R.A. needs to get off the dime and get down there."

By 1969, however, the EEOC got off the dime.

President Ronald Reagan told Congress in a radio speech in 1982 "to get off the dime and adopt the budget."

"It wasn't getting off the dime, much to my displeasure," Mr. Codey said in an interview.

'Getting off the Dime' Mr. Smith said the impact of some new laws had not been gauged.

Hopefully, this will finally lead President Clinton to get off the dime and do something to stop these absurd corrupting practices from occurring in the future."

But Gregg Haifley, deputy director of the fund's health division, said the group was now telling states: "Get off the dime.

I didn't know what to say, except to ask if he had any- thing to tell Base about the Others that might help the ship get off the dime.

Let's get off the dime already, consolidate our spectrum into a unified cooperative of Service providers, and get our fiber networks completed.

"Shoppers have been slower than ever getting off the dime this year, and it looks like some of them may never take off," Ms. Engstrom said.

"We had to get off the dime," said Thomas J. Abinanti, a Democratic legislator from Greenburgh, who wrote the resolution.

"He can recover, but he's not gotten off the dime," Mr. Upton said of Mr. Cheney.

Here, he notes, is an Administration whose press spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, bashes lawyers, but whose F.T.C. can't get off the dime.