Pretty simple.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
If you don’t have the money to spend, you have to find another way to get what you need to get done. It might mean learning how to do it yourself.
The end result is that even though it was a harder road, you learned something along the way that makes you better prepared in the future.
He was directing his remark to a specific group/area. I jumped to the conclusion that it was ‘us’ but as freespirited and Hi Tech pointed out...it’s government. Whether it be citizens on the gov teat or the agencies...it was their opinion those were the areas McDonnell was addressing and not ‘us’. Which makes sense.