Elaine Chao Quotes

I am a fan of the social policies that you find in Europe

The right combination is between a free economy and social policy that addresses the needs of society and creates equal opportunity.

I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.

A lot of the differences between left and right now are differences about the liberal welfare state, about a set of institutions established in America in the middle of the 20th century … that exist in pursuit of an egalitarian ideal.

When I talk about democratic socialist, I'm not looking at Venezuela. I'm not looking at Cuba. I'm looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden.

Maybe he [Bernie Sanders] still thinks about the Democratic Party as the party of the New Deal.

Europeans call it socialism, Americans call it welfare, and Barack Obama calls it change.

Democrats believe that the federal government is not our enemy, it's our partner.

There's no conflict between the social-welfare state and open markets.

If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.

The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice.

The principal purpose of the Democratic Party is to use the force of government to take property away from the people who earn it and give it to people who do not.

We are all socialists now.

The Democrats want to help people who have been disadvantaged by the economy these last decades. The Republicans want to weaken and roll back various aspects of what the Democrats have tried to do.

This is mere socialism. Every Socialist and Communist in the country has been supporting the proposed legislation since it was first dreamed up and submitted to Congress.

The Democrats promised equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance while Republicans offered something that seemed less tangible - the promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets.

It is not impossible to succeed as a social democracy, where business and free enterprise thrive, and not abandon the disenfranchised, poor, sick, and elderly.

I'm not saying everything in Sweden is perfect, because it's not. But it is interesting having grown up in a social democratic country such as Sweden and then watching what's going on in the U.S. and the income disparity.

The path chosen by Barack Obama and the Democrat Party is the road to 'small-c- communism' - and the important thing to understand is that they are quite happy with that choice.

Contemporary social democracy is what I believe is the right concept.

In America I think we need to move towards a social democracy, European-style basically, and I think that in Britain we do as well.

I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.

I think his [Bernie Sanders] campaign was good for the Democratic Party, good for our country. And I know how passionate he is about the issues he cares about. So we'll have a long list of matters to discuss when we sit down.

As far as Bernie Sanders is concerned, he is a decent, honest person, and I supported him. What he means by socialism is New Deal Liberalism. In fact, his actual policies would not have been a great surprise to General Eisenhower. The fact that this is called a "political revolution" is a sign of how far to the right the political spectrum has shifted, mainly in the last 30 years since the neoliberal programs began to be instituted. What he was calling for was a restoration of something like New Deal Liberalism, which is a very good thing.

Democrats believed in "progressivism." They believed in Big Government. But they at least attached optimistic outcomes to it. They really believed they were helping America. They really believed they were helping families, helping people. Now they've just become, "The country's horrible, it's rotten, it needs to be reformed!" The liberals of John F. Kennedy's day did not think there was anything really major wrong with this country.