Quotes About Policy

Conservatives deny that the private depends on public resources. Citing Ronald Reagan's credo that "The Government is the Problem," conservatives are constantly trying to eliminate public resources and to privatize as much as possible.

Norquist meetings have expanded to forty-eight states. Via ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), conservatism has spread at the state level, allowing conservatives to take over state legislatures, gerrymander congressional districts, and take over the House of Representatives with a minority of national voter support.

Any policy that gives people things they haven't earned is seen as immoral, because it lessens the incentive to be self-disciplined. From this perspective, affirmative action looks immoral to conservatives, on the grounds that it gives preferential treatment to women and minorities. It is a relatively direct consequence of the Strict Father model. The

Conservatives have long advanced the idea that our military can—and should—be used to shape foreign policy; our strength is the size and capacity of our military. They have advanced a retributive crime policy—punish the wrongdoers, no need to look at systemic causes of crime. The "war on terror" activates these deep frames, and politicians, the media, and the public continue to use the phrase because the conservative deep frames have become so pervasive. If

This initiative requires one major change in government policy: Shift the massive subsidies that currently find their way to agribusiness and use that taxpayer money to create the infrastructure for a healthy, affordable food system. This will not happen overnight; it is a long-term initiative that could eventually bring us a sustainable agricultural system. Let's

75 percent of charter schools have results that are worse than, or no different from, traditional public schools.

Moreover, charter schools have no accountability to local school districts or the public. A consequence in Texas, for example, is that charter schools tend to debunk evolution and science and teach creationism

As we move beyond Women's History Month, I am committed to advancing legislation to raise the minimum wage and ensure women are paid equally for equal work.

When states like Alabama and Arizona passed some of the harshest immigration laws in history, my Attorney General took them on in court and we won.

We fought hard for green taxes and won.

My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive. We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to follow.

Since I joined Congress, I've been shocked at how many times we were forced to vote on 1,000-plus-page bills without ample time to read or review what was in the final legislation. It's no wonder Congress doesn't enact good policy.

Policy people suffer their own kind of agony, and no wonder. After all, what is the average life of the policy person? You go into government if you are lucky, do your best, aren't appreciated, take all the blame for policies for which you are only partly responsible, leave, realize your reputation has been damaged, maybe permanently.

The fundamentals are the U.S. is going to end up being a net exporter of natural gas. That's going to be wonderful to help our balance of payments, reduce our dependence on a lot of countries that aren't so crazy about us, and change many, many parts of what goes on here.

The idea that we are not going to look after the Great Barrier Reef, which is just a wonderful tourism resource that it can be just for one example - we are not going to look after it, we won't have tight environment regulation, is frankly just not true.

For one thing, one of the wonderful things that we now have is instead of the huge budget surpluses that President Clinton left us with, we now have these huge deficits that we're going to be facing into the future.

Beware of politicians who tell you they'll do all these wonderful things for you for only a small tax increase. Those tax increases are never as small as you might imagine, and the benefits are always smaller than promised and/or imagined.

It shouldn't be the asylum seekers wondering which country they want go to. It should be Europe telling them where to be, be it Lithuania, Sweden, or wherever.

This is Romney's biggest political weakness. His policy flip-flops and the general sense that he's not comfortable in his own skin leads voters, including many supporters, wondering about his core values.

For too long, our country's version of an energy policy has consisted of Americans waking up every day and wondering how much it will cost to drive to work, how much it will cost to keep their business running, how much it will cost to heat or cool their homes.

The American education system couldn't be more badly directed or poorly funded if the Secretary of Education were Ed Wood.

'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

Socialism's not a word that I use. I say 'social democracy' because I don't think the government needs to own all the means of production.