Quotes About Policy

When something goes badly, I don't automatically assume I did something wrong. Instead I ask myself, "What policy was I following that produced this bad outcome, and do I still expect that policy to give the best results overall, occasional bad outcomes notwithstanding?" If yes, then carry on!

We must safely secure our border by investing in more law enforcement and technology, and receiving cooperation from the Mexican government.

I love this idea of the states being this laboratory of democracy where we try things out in one state, and if it works, we take it someplace else…But if you're going to do that, you actually have to take what those successful states did. Not just a piece of it. All the hard parts. (from The Economist article "The reading wars" 6/12/2021)

What has already happened in Russia is what might happen in America and Europe: the stabilization of massive inequality, the displacement of policy by propaganda,

The predominant view was that budgets should be balanced and money supplies tightened. This, as we know today, only made matters worse.

It is the government's job to increase both freedom and security.

After Hitler's rise in 1933, he pursued domestic policy for more than six years before he began his first war.

changes. It was the deliberate policy of Nazi Germany to artificially create conditions of state destruction and then steer the consequences towards Jews.

certain kinds of polities, communist party-states such as the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, are capable, in times of peace, of killing large numbers of their own citizens as a matter of deliberate policy.

Part of Stalin's political talent was his ability to equate foreign threats with failures in domestic policy, as if the two were actually the same thing, and as if he were responsible for neither.

The framework thus seeks to make visible labor and work that are analytically hidden by classical economists and politically denied by policy makers.

We don't want the efficiency of the federal government and the compassion of the IRS to run our health care.

There's the issue of hunger, and there's an issue of if you're going to cut out food programs. We should be focusing on healthy food. Right now, fruits and vegetables are very expensive. So what can we do on the policy side to bring the cost of fruits and vegetables down?

We're adults. We're the ones who should teach the kids what's good to eat. I don't think the government should ever regulate what we eat at home, but we're feeding them in school with tax dollars. Quite frankly, if my tax dollars are being spent to feed kids, I'd rather feed them better food.

So you can say, 'Get Big Government out of here, and don't tell me what to eat ' but when kids are going to school, and they're being fed junk, we're pretty much telling them what to eat, and we're telling them junk is OK.

If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.

The majority of our criminals that we lock up are non-violent offenders.

There are amendments never offered, there are bills never heard, that are basically killed because of the process.

Putting a climate change lens on policy making offers a huge opportunity to make smart decisions about India's future.

When Joe Biden dismantled Trump-era border protections on his first day in office, he created a slow-burning national security crisis.

Clinton was a president who used his office, in creative ways, to try to reinvigorate the federal government to benefit the majority.

I served as a Russian policy officer in the U.S. Navy and worked to implement our nuclear agreements with the Russian Federation.

I was a policy office in my final tour in the Navy, a Russian policy officer, and we were always thinking about our interactions and how they would affect the country 10, 20 years from now.

I actually went out and tried to hire the very best Cabinet officers that I could, understanding they can make help make the hard calls for the budget position that we're in.