Quotes About Policy

It wasn't that people didn't know the difference between good and bad policy. It just didn't matter.

The power to shape budgets and guide policy was what we needed, and that power lay elsewhere.

The receptionist's salary, on the other hand, was taxed at almost twice that rate once FICA was included. From Buffett's perspective, the discrepancy was

a report would surface from the Pentagon or Langley, recommending that U.S. policy pay more attention to human rights and governance issues when dealing with our Middle East partners. But then the Saudis would deliver a vital tip that kept an explosive device from being loaded onto U.S.-bound cargo planes or our naval base in Bahrain would prove critical in managing a flare-up with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, and those reports would be relegated to the bottom of a drawer.

a president wasn't a lawyer or an accountant or a pilot, hired to carry out some narrow, specialized task. Mobilizing public opinion, shaping working coalitions—that was the job. Whether I liked it or not, people were moved by emotion, not facts. To elicit the best rather than the worst of those emotions, to buttress those better angels of our nature with reason and sound policy, to perform while still speaking the truth—that was the bar I needed to clear. —

elections alone don't produce a functioning democracy;

So I ended my speech that night by quoting from Teddy's letter, hoping that his words would bolster the nation just as they had bolstered me. "What we face," he'd written, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country." According to poll data, my address to Congress boosted public support for the healthcare bill, at least temporarily.

Mobilizing public opinion, shaping working coalitions—that was the job. Whether I liked it or not, people were moved by emotion, not facts. To elicit the best rather than the worst of those emotions, to buttress those better angels of our nature with reason and sound policy, to perform while still speaking the truth—that was the bar I needed to clear.

In contrast to his father, George W. Bush and members of his administration actively downplayed evidence of a warming planet and refused to engage in international efforts to curb greenhouse gases, despite the fact that for the first half of his presidency the United States ranked as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. As

Just as I had in Illinois, I tried to do what I could to influence policy at the margins, pushing modest, nonpartisan measures—funding to safeguard against a pandemic outbreak

Worse yet, my administration was deporting undocumented workers at an accelerating rate. This wasn't a result of any directive from me, but rather it stemmed from a 2008 congressional mandate that both expanded ICE's budget and increased collaboration between ICE and local law enforcement departments in an effort to deport more undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

Nevertheless, the noise orchestrated by Netanyahu had the intended effect of gobbling up our time, putting us on the defensive, and reminding me that normal policy differences with an Israeli prime minister—even one who presided over a fragile coalition government—exacted a domestic political cost that simply didn't exist when I dealt with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, or any of our other closest allies.

whenever I write a letter to a family who has lost a loved one in Iraq, or read an email from a constituent who has dropped out of college because her student aid has been cut, I'm reminded that the actions of those in power have enormous consequences—a price that they themselves almost never have to pay.

But when it came to actual policy—when I asked GOP leaders what exactly they proposed to help drive down medical costs, protect people with preexisting conditions, and cover thirty million Americans who couldn't otherwise get insurance—their answers were as threadbare as Chuck Grassley's had been during his visit to the Oval months before. I'm

Still, for both policy and political reasons, I felt that progressives couldn't afford to ignore economics. Those of us who believed in the government's ability to solve big problems had an obligation to pay attention to the real-world impact of our decisions and not just trust in the goodness of our intentions.

Many of the veteran diplomats and experts they talked to were predictably skeptical of the need for any change to U.S. policy, arguing that as unsavory as some of our Arab allies might be, the status quo served America's core interests—something that wasn't guaranteed if more populist governments took their place.

And although it was hard to match his excitement over washers and dryers, the results really were pretty amazing: By the time I left office, those new appliance standards were on track to remove another 210 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere annually.

like most wealthy Americans, almost all his income came from dividends and capital gains, investment income that since 2003 has been taxed at only 15 percent.

Whether I liked it or not, people were moved by emotion, not facts. To elicit the best rather than the worst of those emotions, to buttress those better angels of our nature with reason and sound policy, to perform while still speaking the truth—that was the bar I needed to clear.

In other words, if you wanted good government, then expertise mattered. You needed public institutions stocked with people whose job it was to pay attention to important stuff so the rest of us citizens didn't have to.

Congress had come to effectively require 60 votes in the Senate, or what was often referred to as a "supermajority.

my administration was deporting undocumented workers at an accelerating rate. This wasn't a result of any directive from me, but rather it stemmed from a 2008 congressional mandate that both expanded ICE's budget and increased collaboration between ICE and local law enforcement departments in an effort to deport more undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

Positive psychologists' more important contribution to the defense of the status qyo has been to assert or find that circumstances play only a minor role in determining a person's happiness. ... Indeed, if circumstances play only a small role - even 25 percent - in human happiness, then policy is a marginal exercise. Why advocate for better jobs and schools, safer neighborhoods, universal health insurance, or any other liberal desideratum if these measures will do little to make people happy?

Drug Testing: A Bad Investment.