Quotes About Legislation

I cannot in good conscience vote for final passage of legislation that would pave the way to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

I look at ANWR (Artic National Wildlife Refuge) as a poison pill in the energy bill.

No one is more keen than me to see the Hunting Act repealed, because I believe in the management of wildlife.

What we know is that the environmental movement had a series of dazzling victories in the late '60s and in the '70s where the whole legal framework for responding to pollution and to protecting wildlife came into law. It was just victory after victory after victory. And these were what came to be called 'command-and-control' pieces of legislation.

Each day I wake up and check the news. Nearly every day it's merely to make sure I did not miss anything wildly controversial. Who said what, what are the implications of that comment, what was the context of what was said? Some days are slow, which is great. We can focus on a particular policy issue or piece of legislation.

Obamacare is the wildly complex Rube Goldberg contraption it is because getting the legislation through Congress required so many political tradeoffs and so many unavoidable deals with so many vested interests. But that's no excuse.

The war on drugs - a big-government product if there ever was one - has been wildly unsuccessful, by any metric.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

What I think we need to do is pass a bill that says number one, you own your data. Number two, you can license it to Facebook but the licensing has to be knowing, it has to be willful.

When a politician like Marco Rubio is willing to sacrifice his career defining immigration reform legislation solely to insure that gays and lesbians are denied equal protection under the law, we have to admit that we're under attack. This is not pragmatic politics at work. These are the policies of bias, exclusion and unfairness.

If we want our laws to change, we need to elect people who are willing to change them.

We shouldn't deny the right of the minority to filibuster, but we need to do a much better job of making them own it. That way, the American people could figure out who is being obstructionist and who is willing to compromise.

I've thought about it, not a lot, but I thought my relationship with Congress - the Democrats and Republicans - would help me get some things done. Not everything, but at least they'd be willing to try.

Guns are part of the Constitution, and no one is willing to have that tough conversation with Congress and the Senate and the president to say maybe that's got to change. People talk about it - but I mean actual change.

I am 100 percent supportive of the stand-alone bill to repeal 'don't ask, don't tell' that Sens. Lieberman and Collins have now proposed, and indeed I will co-sponsor that legislation. It is time for this discriminatory policy to end, and I am willing to pursue any effective legislative path that could lead to that result.

Nothing is so unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose.

The Offshore Wind Energy Act could be not only a jobs creator, but also a history maker.

I haven't pursued it as a senator because I know it's like spitting in the wind. But I still believe it's the right thing. And if I were governor and a bill came to my desk that provided for background checks at gun shows, I would sign that.

Energy legislation in Congress and the focus on energy legislation is first and foremost about creating good jobs. In Florida, where solar and biofuel and wind and so many other areas are important and so many in the private sector continues to pursue these, we need policies that will encourage that.

In Congress, I've advocated for an all-of-the-above energy policy that identifies and promotes alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, biomass and hydropower.

The House passage of our bill is a victory for this country! Common sense wins out. I'm just so thrilled and excited. The sale of guns must stop. Halfway measures are not enough.

I mean to say that Congress can hereafter decide whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted.

I am pleased to report that Texas is known for having one of the strongest set of open government laws in our Nation. And ever since that experience, I have long believed that our federal government could use 'a little Texas sunshine.'

We can't have deficit spending in Texas. You have to balance your budget every two years.