Quotes from Steve Scalise

As both Republican Study Committee Chairman and Majority Whip, I've made it a top priority to bring openness and inclusiveness into the legislative process so we can bring our dynamic conference together as we advance our agenda.

Especially in the whip operation, you're in constant contact with the members and their chiefs of staff, so having a chief who's approachable and reaches out to other chiefs so people know what's going - know what they're looking for in the policy that comes to the House floor - is incredibly important.

When you elected me to serve as your Whip, I committed to create an inclusive and open Whip operation - one that didn't just register your objections and move on, but instead actively sought you out and worked to build coalitions that enabled us to advance our agenda on some of the most controversial issues we have faced.

We ought to prioritize national disasters... in a fiscally responsible way.

I'm very proud of the Italian heritage of my great-grandparents, who came here from Italy, and how they helped be a part of the American Dream, and that's something we want to continue to make available to everybody who wants to come here.

As all of us here have known, and as people all throughout the nation are witnessing, Gabby Giffords is a fighter.

I think people all across the country want us to secure the border and make sure that terrorists are not coming into our country.

When you get into this line of work, you're in public office, you expect you're gonna have cheap shots taken at you. That's part of the process.

At the end of the day, you are judged by your character. And look, I'm proud of my record of working to help people throughout my years of public service.

I fought really hard to win a seat in Congress, and everybody else did, too.

I think it's a shame that the day somebody hears about a shooting, the first thing they think about is, 'How can I go promote my gun control agenda?' as opposed to saying, 'How do I go pray and help the families that are suffering?'

If you had a job, and every day you're going back home and telling all your friends how horrible your job is and how horrible your employer is, after a while, they're going to start believing you. And then at some point, they're going to start questioning you and say, 'Why, if it's so bad, are you doing it?'

There was this mischaracterization that I ran for leadership to be the guy to get conservatives to vote for leadership. I said I would be a conservative voice at the leadership table.

There are a lot of people in the Rust Belt who felt like, 'Nobody's concerned about me, and my shot at the American dream is going away.' We need to restore that.

My theory has always been, if you take care of your business today, take care of the job you have at hand, whatever else comes down the road will be there for you.

I don't want doctors and patients to be having to - having to literally ration care, take away that relationship by having the government come in and interfere.

There are going to be times when we disagree with our leadership, but ultimately, we've got to work hard to pull our leadership to the right and to move a conservative agenda forward and unite as conservatives if we're going to get things done.

We had eight years of Barack Obama depleting our military, ignoring a lot of the threats around the world.

Our argument is everybody ought to be paying lower rates, and we ought to be focused on growing the economy and rebuilding the middle class.

We want to say nobody should lose their health care.

Medicaid is one of the most failed forms of health care.

You want to talk about something that truly changes the game in this country, Medicaid is one of the most failed forms of health care.

There's a general understanding amongst, I think, most people in this country that whether or not you have a preexisting condition, it's not your fault, and you shouldn't be discriminated against in healthcare policy.

You gotta get into some confrontations sometimes to get the right result on the floor, but I think the bulk of our membership wants us to work out problems before a bill comes to the floor.