Nat Hentoff Quotes

All week Senate will be on the Stimulus/Porkulus Bill. Tune in C SPAN

I was in the room with, you know, more than a dozen Republicans trying to negotiate the stimulus. Most of them decided the politics of the situation meant they should walk away, even if it wasn't responsible in terms of what our country needed right then.

I supported the stimulus package.

It has become fashionable to rail against government intervention in the economy, and the FHA is a favorite example by those trying to show the government's overreach. In reality, the FHA shows how government action during the Great Recession forestalled a much worse economic fate.

And taking more money out of the private economy and having the government perform as it has poorly done with the stimulus I don't think is the right way to go.

We have to change course. And we have to do so now. That is why I worked with my colleagues in Washington to pass the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The vaunted Democratic stimulus bill has failed to stimulate anything other than a few federal bureaucrats.

[Obama White House] rescued the economy from the worst recession.

The comparatively greater prosperity of the United States is an outcome of the fact that the New Deal did not come in 1900 or 1910, but only in 1933.

Tiger Woods and John Edwards had a better year than the stimulus bill.

Obamacare is his. The stimulus is his. The economy is his. And yet Barack Obama still treats it as though it's being run by others and he's still fighting them and he's running into obstacles.

The bill that was about jobs, jobs, jobs has turned into a bill that's about spending, spending, spending.

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.

Congress, rather than administrative agencies should fashion any policy that is not only of great economic importance but also one that has divided the faiths and loyalties of classes of people.

We are not ready to accede to a principle of legislation by which the State shall take into its own hands the valuation of rent throughout Ireland.

The problem now is to shape our policy so as to avoid a calamitous break in the stock market … and at the same time accomplish if possible, the recovery of Europe.

Let’s have a moratorium on press conferences …. Get off your asses and let’s do something and fix the biggest doggone crisis in the history of this country.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it

I have a lot of sympathy for every ailing economy …. The question is not whether you have sympathy. The question is what would be the right measure to help alleviate the situation.

The economic meltdown that would define every aspect of Obama's economy came to a head well before he became president, of course, and so did the legislation that would be the basis for everything that came after.

During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator.

I supported some very, very objectionable things in terms of bailouts or rescues, but I did it not for Wall Street, but for the American people.

There is a broad consensus, not only in the United States but in most of the world, that if you are in an economic downturn, you need to stimulate. Germany seems to be an exception.

The passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - or stimulus bill, as it is often called - is a perfect example in which dire circumstances necessitate immediate action. But with such large amounts of taxpayer money at stake, a hastily developed, under-thought-out plan could have been disastrous.

There is no one in America more qualified to talk about bailouts than Mitch McConnell.