Barack Obama Quotes

Sausage making and policy-making shouldn't be seen close-up.

The challenge has been, we make policy in the world of politics.

First, the American legislative process isn't well suited to large and complex measures.

I think there's a lot to learn from Rockefeller on how to pass legislation.

I know how to take good ideas and turn them into sensible law at great odds.

As I've learned in my time in the state legislature, important legislation is always a work in progress.

Speaker Newt Gingrich has appointed a task force, which I'm on, and over the next couple months the task force is going to try to come up with legislation that does what we're all trying to do. I feel pretty good about the members that are on the task force.

Politics doesn't matter, policy does.

Nothing happens in any legislative body that's not purposeful.

The only way to improve the GOP brand and make good public policy is to fix the process. This requires transforming the way Congress does business.

Public policy has been a passion of mine. For three decades, I've had some involvement in the political process.

I know how to make sausage, and now that I've seen how laws are made, I'll stick with sausage.

The dominant color of politics is gray; difficult choices and compromise are required at almost every step of the journey toward a major new program.

Legislative proposals are not merely vehicles for expressing policy, they are devices for getting policy decided.

Nearly all legislation is the result of compromise.

Process is America’s most important [political] product.

Regulations are a form of legislation and should be decided by a political process, not more or better benefit-cost analyses.

From time to time we must remind ourselves that the President has a role in the legislative process.

You can make omelets out of eggs, but you cannot make eggs out of omelets.

We need not wade into the current of Niagara Falls unless we please; but, after we have waded in we must thereafter be governed by the course and force of the stream.

Jon Kyl did a really good job of presenting a case and moving issues. John McCain probably is one of the more effective legislators, getting things on through the process. I always thought, too - and this may seem kind of odd - Richard Shelby was just an effective guy a lot of times at stopping things.

I didn't know how to pass a major piece of legislation; I didn't know how to get colleagues to support my views. It took a lot of asking for advice and learning. One of the lessons is that you have to be able to tell people why you care, and you're only going to be able to do that if you talk to someone whom an issue is affecting.

If becoming a member of Congress is like going to college, then crafting legislation is our homework.

There's a lot of work you have to do before you ever fire the starting gun on a health reform bill - doing the scut work with members of Congress, talking to your allies - to figure out the best plan.

There's a lot of new subject matter to learn. You start slowly peeling the onion and start figuring out how the policy and the politics intersect.