I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.Collection: Health
Reclassification is the best way to for us to preserve the Internet as an unfettered tool for communication and the sharing of ideas.Collection: Communication
Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure.Collection: Failure
I made education the highest priority of my campaign - actually education and jobs - and the reason is a simple one: I think the future of America depends on it.Collection: Future
There are two tests in life, more important than any other test. On Monday morning, when you wake up, do you feel in the pit of your stomach you can't wait to go to work? And when you're ready to go home Friday afternoon, do you say, 'I can't wait to go home?'Collection: Morning
I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.Collection: Medical
We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it's almost a temper tantrum.Collection: Amazing
I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession.Collection: Teacher
The dome of the U.S. Capitol has fallen into severe disrepair... As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which oversees matters of the Capitol's physical plant, I have serious concerns about the consequences of omitting this funding from the stopgap spending measure.
Working with the media remains an effective and essential way to raise issues, educate the public, and prod policy-makers and corporate leaders to change for the better.
The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite - plutocrats like the Koch Brothers -want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants.
The way to lessen the grip of the Tea Party on the electoral process would be to do what a handful have done and have a primary where all voters, members of every party, can vote, and the top two vote-getters then enter a runoff.
The Tea Party people are ideologues. They are right, and no one can change their minds. There is no reason for compromise.
You have to walk in the other guy's moccasins. You have to think what they think. If you want to bring somebody onto your side, you have to figure out what motivates them. What do they need?
The Tea Party elites believe government is evil. Everything about government is bad, and they blame all problems, even non-economic problems, problems that were caused by the private sector, on government.
Economic conservatives like immigration reform, and in fact, many of them supported the bill that John McCain and I put together in the Senate.
When Republicans say, 'The first thing you do when you do deficit reduction is reduce rates,' it would be like Democrats saying, 'The first thing you do when you do deficit reduction is provide free Medicare at age 55.' We'd like to do that! But it won't bring the deficit down. That's for sure.
There are some tax expenditures that are there for very obvious and very important and very good policy reasons. Whether it's the charitable deduction or the deduction for homes, it's not a loophole.
Everyone has a hole inside themselves. They don't know they had it until they have kids, and then that hole fills up. And it's so great; it's just God's greatest gift to us.
What the public hates the most is when they think the politicians aren't listening to them. They understand that we can't solve all their problems with a snap of our fingers, but they sure want us to try because we are public servants.
Bigotry has always been the poison of America, and we oughta do everything to eradicate it with no excuses or explanations.
Every administration has this idea to talk tough to Israel and make nice to the Arabs and the Palestinians, and that's the way to bring about peace. It's counter-productive - it's actually the opposite.
Most of the people I meet who are on unemployment are people who have had jobs for 25 years, lost them; they've been knocking on doors every week.
I think it's a little insulting, a bit insulting to American workers when Rand Paul says that unemployment insurance is a disservice.
The Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of undisclosed dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government.
The bottom line is there are lots of problems that were not created by government. The biggest one is loss of middle class incomes, loss of good-paying jobs which was created by technology and globalization. Above all, when you can move a job to China or India, it reduces wages.
The vast majority of the people employed by Wall Street are the secretary who goes in to work on the Long Island Rail Road, who makes fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year.
You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a President.
The Internet in the 21st Century is as important to our future as highways were in the 20th Century. Like a highway, the Internet must remain free and open for all - not determined by the highest bidders.
When Mitt Romney says he wants to reform the tax code, hold on to your wallets. We know Mitt Romney never met a tax haven he didn't like. But his new favorite tax haven is actually not the Cayman Islands - its Paul Ryan's budget.
As long as the Palestinians send terrorists onto school buses and to nightclubs to blow up people, Israel has no choice but to build the fence.
Anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth, and there is only one way to see the world, always gets us into trouble.
To do health care was a noble, good thing, and it will help America dramatically. I don't begrudge Barack Obama choosing it, even though if I were president, I might not have.
I respect people who feel things passionately. I do. But when someone is a judge, that is not what they should bring to the bench. It is not really passion, except in rare instances, that serves the bench well. It is, rather, an ability to understand the law and follow it.