Valerie Jarrett Quotes

I think that what is truly unfortunate is when an entire party makes a decision that they're going to block every single thing that a president wants to accomplish. It's very - it's very hard to get anything done in those circumstances.

What happens in the Senate is the Republicans sink to the lowest common denominator.

It's counterintuitive, but the most divisive arrangement is when the same party controls both Congress and the presidency, a situation encountered in eight of the past 10 years. With government unified under a single party, the minority has the least possible incentive to cooperate with the majority.

While 2013 will not see a major national election, we can be sure that most Republicans will obstruct and some Democrats will appease.

I've had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress.

People want divided government.

After a national crisis, it’s never too early for a partisan debate in Washington.

We need less bipartisanship in Congress.

You used to get legislation done by getting the moderates to agree. But we have no moderates now so it doesn’t get done

The middle in Congress is gone now. That is where we got most things done.

In our political system it’s easier to block action than to act.

Overall, Congress is dysfunctional, partisan, and polarized, and it isn’t getting anything done. We need commissions to break out of divisive partisanship.

Obama tried to make deals with Republicans, and I don't think he realized he'd have such an insanely opposing Congress.

For nearly three years, President Obama devoted a great deal of effort to finding compromises with Congressional Republicans. That was futile, in my view, since those Republicans had made it clear from the day he was inaugurated in 2009 that their plan was to oppose everything he wanted and then paint him as a failed president.

There is too much blind partisanship in Congress, which has blocked progress on critical issues. Too many members view compromise as weakness rather than the essence of our democracy. This has to end.

President Obama can talk about having no grand schemes and making no big gains, but the reality is he can't get anything of significance through Congress.

Unfortunately, the genuine relationships and friendships that some of us have developed across the aisle in recent years does not translate into a willingness to seek compromise, consensus, or middle ground on the major challenges facing our state. The extreme ideology of the self-styled Tea Party legislators in Arizona absolutely rules the day.

So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.

Partisan rancour and party politics and ideology have got in the way of compromise - and compromise is the only thing that has ever made politics successful.

We've gotten to the point now where Republicans and Democrats have nothing in common besides being members of the 'caustic caucus,' and we can't get anything done.

Partisanship particularly increased after the 1994 elections and then the appearance of the first unified Republican government since the 1950s.

Everywhere I go - from Main Street to Wall Street - people ask, 'What's happened to our political system? Why can't Washington folks work together?'

There are a lot of politicians who are just obstructionists.

During the Obama years, the Republicans have done an unprecedented amount of stonewalling on cabinet-and-below appointees. I would also argue that their war on judicial nominees has been way beyond what went before. Really, if the president nominated God to serve on the D.C. Court of Appeals, Mitch McConnell would threaten a filibuster.

Watching Congress is like being in permanent divorce court