Abdullah II of Jordan Quotes

As we get closer to the end of this Congress, we should be addressing the urgent needs of the American people - the war in Iraq, affordable health care, a sensible energy policy, quality education for our children, retirement security, and a sound and fair fiscal policy.

My parents are left-wing, and I would describe myself as that. But also, you know what? I wouldn't describe myself as that. Because I don't have to. Because I'm not a political party. Most people are a little bit of each, and we change our mind on various issues.

Before this learning experience, I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty, the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons, and liberals who supported them.

Cantwell is so extreme that she doesn't see anything wrong with 11-year-old girls getting Plan B without a prescription. She is more liberal than Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and more liberal than President Obama. That is pretty extreme - a lot farther to the Left than most Washingtonians are comfortable with.

Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are - these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.

The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

I believe, unlike people that are totally free-market, laissez-faire fundamentalists, that there is an important role that the government can play - one, in providing public goods, whether it's education, health care, or other things, and two, supervising countercyclical policy - stimulus, whether it's monetary, fiscal, or otherwise.

It's not just spending, it's not just taxes, it's not just corruption, it is progressivism, and it is in both parties. It is in the Republicans and the Democrats.

It's a tough one for me, politics. I grew up in a house where my father is a Christian book salesman and a Tory, and my mum's a social worker. So I can always see the benefits of both arguments.

Americans have long trusted the views of Democrats on the environment, the economy, education, and health care, but national security is the one matter about which Republicans have maintained what political scientists call 'issue ownership.'

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.

I don't think Obama's a socialist or evil, I just think he's wrong and I disagree with him, he's a leftist, that's what they are in France and in Great Britain and in Canada.

Devolutionary reform will not provide a factory, a machine or jobs, build a school, train a doctor or put a pound on pensions.

Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks.

When the greatest part of the [U.S.] budget pays for our defense and the livelihood of retirees, it is pointless to pretend that public spending is an embarrassment consisting only of welfare and waste.

National security is not only building war machines to kill. National security is as much a policy of the living who prefer life over death, wellness over sickness, work over idleness, education over illiteracy, and food over hunger.

Now we’re going to get big government.

… the two factions (of the Republican Party) are at daggers drawn over government’s role, which one side sees as indispensable, the other as insidious..

I don't think Republicans are evil. I think they mostly have a different philosophy of government than I do.

Listen, everybody thinks I'm a Republican, but I'm not a Republican.

I'm like most people in America. I'm conservative on some things, and I'm liberal on other things.

I don't like to define myself as necessarily conservative. What is it to be a conservative? What is it to be a Republican, even?

I believe you can divide the people in to two basic groups, those who believe government is a necessary good and those who believe it is a necessary evil, those who want government to take care of them, those who want government to leave them alone.

You can't be for big government, big taxes and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.

I thought of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief, too. It's a shame everything has to have a label. I feel that if I was figuratively dropped on the Earth and there was a political line, I would be just left of center. The difference for me is that conservatives are more interested in property values and rights and free markets, and liberals are more interested in human rights. In the end, there are people who don't fit into the marketplace and are not equipped. I believe the government should step in where the free market fails.