Quotes About Reform

One of the things that happens that's challenging within the democratic process is that people say, 'Look at this failure, so we should totally change this whole thing.' And then you add in tons of bureaucratic process and checks and balances, and all of a sudden, it doesn't work that well.

We used to burn tons of crackers earlier, but when I realized the effects they have on our environment, I stopped burning them. We have been celebrating cracker-free Diwali for 15 years now.

As Tony Blair has made clear, our fundamental challenge is how to make Europe work better.

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

Congress is too old. They don't have a stake in the game.

Is it too late to institute a leap year and mandate that the holidays fall on regular, convenient dates - so that Id al-Fitr will come, say, in the spring and Id al-Adha in early summer?

I think there are too many people in jail for too long and for not necessarily good reasons.

Too many people in Washington care about power institutions, not caring about changing the lives of everyday Americans.

Health care is much the same - the status quo is, by all measures, failing far too many people - and we must not shrink from the challenge.

The Dream Act as it's been written originally is too broad, to be honest. It basically would apply to too many people.

It has to be about more than punishment. We need to rehabilitate people. We lock up far too many people in America today. We lock them up as if locking them up is gonna solve the problem. And locking them up does not solve the problem. Did locking me up make me better? No, it did not. It made my struggle harder.

The biggest problem in our government is that even those people who are there that are good and well-intended, there's too many people in positions to write legislation who have never experienced the challenges of regular people.

Education in the past has been too much inspiration and too little information.

Politicians - in both political parties - spend too much money. And they forget to focus on what matters most: fixing the economic mess they created and putting people back to work.

The simple truth is that America is locking up too many people, for too long, and spending too much money on them.

We have got a - we've got a good federal work force, but we have too many people, and we're paying them too much money.

People in politics tend to spend far too much time on higher profile issues affecting few people and too little time on such basic processes that affect thousands or millions and which we know how to do much better.

My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school. This teacher took an interest in me. In fact, he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish.

It's an embarrassment that we don't have a broad enough consensus among political leaders that true reform should take place. I could count the members of Congress on one hand that took these issues seriously.

I think there's no question but what the tail end of the Bush administration, Bush-Cheney administration, that we took steps specifically geared to try and free up the financial sector.

The death penalty in the U.S. has become a political tool - and it should never be that.

Using political tools to change social conditions won't work.

When we talk about justice in America we're really talking about justice brought about by the people, not by judges who are tools of the establishment or prosecutors who are are equally tools of the establishment or the wardens or the police officers.

Let's cut the top rates of stamp duty to enable more movement to take place and also looking at the broader tax reform, simplifying our tax system.