Quotes About Washington

There's a knee jerk reaction in Washington when something isn't perfect to just add more money, add more personnel, it'll all be OK. That's not true, especially with complex issues like veterans health care.

Here's the thing Washington always misses. Washington always wants a deal. America wants a solution. Americans sent us here to solve problems.

Health care has become a political football that is being tossed back and forth by both sides in Washington. And it's divided our country.

The groups who spend the most on lobbying lawmakers in Washington are well-known: ExxonMobil, Boeing, AT&T, General Electric.

Unfortunately I put the opening date on the 5th of December 1941 and on the 7th of December the Japanese bombarded Pearl Harbour. My dream of a theater in Washington D.C. came to a prompt end.

I think most of the Washington foreign policy establishment exists in a fantasy world when it comes to Syria. They fundamentally don't understand that Russia and Iran, from the beginning, had much more at stake in Syria than the United States did. Russia and Iran were going to do everything possible in order to keep Bashar al-Assad in power.

I was born in Boston, but then I went down to Virginia. We spent a little time in Maryland, and then were in Virginia by the time I was seven. What struck me the most was that my mother thought that she had gone to the middle of nowhere, and we would still drive four hours for her to get her hair cut in Washington, D.C.

Among all the upheavals of war with al Qaeda, the surest indicator of the historic stakes is the ongoing rotation of top U.S. government managers - scores at a time - into a bunker deep underground and far from Washington.

The making of the Barack Obama franchise far exceeded the skill set of Washington's best. In fact, the recipe for Mr. Obama's global popularity can be attributed less to political minds and chance than to the enduring power of Hollywood.

Success of bitcoin and the exchanges that deal in it could be interpreted by some to mean the demise of central banks, Wall Street, and the Washington insiders who trade on inside information and market manipulation.

The Iraq war was always a long shot. But it was made immeasurably longer by its principal architects in Washington, including Douglas Feith, who ignored expert advice, reserved most of their effort for fighting each other in ideological battles, and regarded the Iraqi people as an afterthought.

One of the reasons Americans hold Washington in such low regard is the perception that nothing ever gets done. Whatever the issue - no matter how urgent - they always seem to be 'working on it.'

With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the Tea Party.

I'm running because Hoosiers deserve a senator who makes promises here in Indiana and then keeps them in Washington.

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.

The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American.

What's unique about Washington is that no one's from here. Almost everybody came here to change the world, to make a difference.

When I came back to Washington to be The Times' chief congressional correspondent in 1991, I was looking for a book subject, and Ted Kennedy stood out for two reasons.

Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.

In Washington, the translation of E Pluribus Unum has been lost. The belief that we are one nation - united in purpose - caring about and for one another is no longer the practice.

We all know there are problems with Obamacare, and Washington's implementation of it has been abysmal. But rejecting Medicaid won't fix any of those things.

There's a Washington standard of casually putting things off the record. It's really gone too far. I don't know an easy way to turn it back.

Primarily, we need to change 100 years of thinking, where we try to extend the promise of American life by moving things to Washington, and let's move it the other way: less of Washington, more from ourselves.

What is interesting in Washington, D.C., is I've never missed a vote. The veterans' committee keeps track of hearings, and I've never missed a hearing or a vote on the VA committee.