Quotes About Government

Wall Street's outsized influence in our nation's capital is something I've talked about for a long time - long before I even thought about running for office. But where I see a problem - an infestation, really - a lot of others in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to see government working just fine.

The problem is we have a Wall Street-to-Washington access of power that has controlled the political climate. The donor class feeds the political class who does the dance that the donor class wants. And the result is federal government keeps getting bigger.

It isn't enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflect this anger back into, 'How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?'

We will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it - not by turning it over to Wall Street.

Sharia has become an increasingly significant force in American capitalism, thanks to the embrace by Wall Street and the U.S. government of so-called Sharia-Compliant Finance. Indeed, this country's taxpayers now own the largest purveyor of sharia-compliant insurance products in the world: AIG.

Washington, D.C., is the new Wall Street. No significant financial transaction of any consequence occurs without it.

I've been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I've never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street. And I'm not sure where it comes from, but I suspect it's got to do with a general schism in this society which is really becoming ever more destructive.

The issue is the Republican Party has been paying too much attention to Wall Street and not enough attention to Main Street.

I turned on Wall Street for the same reason everybody else did: The American taxpayer was forced to cut mook deals to bail out guys who didn't deserve it.

Having billions of dollars immediately available to plug budget holes without raising taxes is very appealing. And to the delight of Wall Street investors, state and local governments often fail to ask the important questions or consider the long-term impact.

It appears that Wall Street is not acting as a force for economic expansion, providing access to capital for companies that make things. Rather, it seems, Wall Street is using government bailouts to lever up.

We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton's, or Abraham Lincoln's?

We're going to be aggressive on Wall Street and in Albany and on Medicaid fraud.

Every president needs to deal with the permanent government of the country, and the permanent government of the country is Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats and the questions becomes what is the relationship between that president and Wall Street.

There are some who think that the government is limited in how many corruption cases it can bring against Wall Street, because juries can't understand the complexity of the financial schemes involved. But in 'U.S.A. v. Carollo,' that turned out not to be true.

Unlike the Tea Party, who see themselves as the customers of government, people in the Occupy Wall Street movement understand that we are the government. Stated most simply, we are trying to run a 21st-century society on a 13th-century economic operating system. It just doesn't work.

Both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich supported the Wall Street bailout.

I opposed the Medicare prescription drug entitlement. I opposed the Wall Street bailout. I opposed the stimulus bill.

On Wall Street, financial crisis destroys jobs. Here in Washington, it creates them. The rest is just details.

It's time to put the national interest before the interests of Wall Street.

The Tea Party grew out of indignation over the Wall Street bailout - an indignation shared by the vast majority of Americans. But the Tea Party ended up directing its ire at government rather than at big business and Wall Street.

In truth, government has been good to Wall Street and big business.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was fortunate: He didn't take office until nearly four years after the Wall Street crash, by which time the Republicans' responsibility for the Depression was taken for granted.

The over-representation of Wall Street banks in senior government positions sends a bad message. It tells people that one - and only one - point of view will dominate economic policymaking.