Quotes About Reform

For-profit long-term care absolutely needs to go.

I want to help other people clear their records, and I want to help them avoid some of the loopholes that get people caught up in our criminal justice system.

I bemoaned the pending loss of Obamacare/the Affordable Care Act.

It's just crazy how the Louisiana court system works.

I want to see us push for economical and educational advancement in communities of color and low-income communities, and I want to see our relationships between our communities and our law enforcement be advanced.

The lure of post-public service lobbying employment needs to be eliminated.

There is no legislative change that can be made to make up for an economy that's not growing and not expanding.

My mama whupped me away from the penitentiary.

Lots of people can manage. That's not the question. It's this: Can we reimagine? Knowing how government works is not the same as getting it to work transformationally.

There have been some management issues with Amtrak, but I think they have cleaned up their act.

The mandate given to me was one of change.

The government needs to work to improve how markets perform.

You can't, in the 21st century, continue to live in a system where people live under martial law for 30 years.

Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.

The foundations demand that public schools and teachers be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountability.

The history of education is a seemingly endless parade of "new ideas" that are actually old ideas renamed.

Nations such as Finland, Canada, Japan, and South Korea spend time and resources improving the skills of their teachers, not selectively firing them in relation to student test scores.

In a classic case of nepotism, Hillary was appointed to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform during Clinton's first term. The plan was so half-baked, and presented so poorly, that even Democrats shunned it, and the whole scheme collapsed and had to be withdrawn.

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

I don't want to stop legal immigration to this country. In fact, I would like to reform and increase immigration in some important ways. Our current immigration laws are upside down—they make it tough on the people we need to have here, and easy for the people we don't want here. This country is a magnet for many of the smartest, hardest-working people born in other countries, yet we make it difficult for these bright people who follow the laws to settle here.

You will be attacked for trying to change anything.

Drain the swamp

Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.

Demand the best from yourself and be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures.