Mitch McConnell Quotes

Given the slow pace of Washington's bureaucracy, policymakers are often busy solving yesterday's problems. This rearview mirror approach afflicts Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

If I get to be president, what can I do anyway? With Congress and the press, what chance do I have to make basic changes?

The president named Obama is probably not going to repeal the bill that's named after him.

As every newspaper reader, liberal activist, or parliamentary junkie knows, the overarching barrier to most of Obama's agenda is the abuse of the filibuster in the Senate. In fact, several of Obama's second term priorities are not ideas in search of a majority - they are majorities in search of an up-or-down vote.

As a country, we should be moving forward, but instead conservative lawmakers keep dragging us back.

If President Barack Obama wants me to allow marriage for same-sex couples in my country (Zimbabwe), he must come here so that I marry him first.

The manufacturing industry is starting to press for some kind of national healthcare. Now it's beginning to put it on the agenda. It doesn't matter if the population wants it. What 90% of the population wants would be kind of irrelevant. But if part of the concentration of corporate capital that basically runs the country - another thing we're not allowed to say but it's obvious - if part of that sector becomes in favor then the issue moves onto the political agenda.

If a legislator is safe from competition, or if he represents groups with the same economic and political beliefs, he does not have to change his ideas or respond to the needs of the broader population. He can rest content with a mediocre, absentee performance knowing he will be returned to office. And as he is returned year after year the seniority system gives him immense control over people from other parts of the country whose views he need not heed at all.

The politics, policies, the President [Barack Obama] and the American people are all pointing in the right direction to fix our immigration system and pass legislation this year.

I think the way the country has changed in part because of the presidency of Barack Obama, I think in part because of what we've - the violence that we have seen on our cell phones and our TV sets over the last couple of years. I think Black Lives Matter has helped to force these issues. Women like Sabrina Fulton. We're having a different conversation in this country right now about race and what it means to really understand your experience is and my experience is.

I went to Congress to change the policies of our country. I did not go to change the behaviors of members of Congress.

The president [Barack Obama] asked for a commitment of, I think, 100,000 jobs for veterans and military spouses over the next couple of years. And we announced during the tour last week that we have gotten more than 60,000 jobs, and we're well on our way to just crashing that goal out of the water, because what businesses are understanding is that these men and women are some of the most highly trained resources that we have in this country.

The central question for American politics right now is how did the country that elected Barack Obama elect Donald Trump. There's a lot to what Ta-Nehisi says about the racial reaction and backlash. And the power and the force and ultimately the success. The man who was selling this racist conspiracy theory about the first black President's birth: that's what launched him into a political career that ended up getting him elected the President of the United States. That is an absolutely remarkable fact.

The message [of Donald Trump ] is that if anybody lives in those circumstances in this country, that's something that the government should be working to try to change.

Senator Barack Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who I think can do great things for our country.

I think it is one of the most extraordinary elections, a turning point for our country and for the world. That remarkable young man [Barack Obama] has kept his demeanor, kept his temperament and has shown a power to inspire. I see what energy that he has inspired among the young. Well, it inspires us old goats too.

I think we should not do what the Republicans did, which is to spend eight years saying they would do absolutely nothing because we do stand for the country.

The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy.

You can use the [Barack] Obama administration as a recent example. For seven years they've been unopposed. The Republican Party's not trying to stop 'em on a single thing. Much of Obama's agenda has been a success. He has been able to attack various traditions, institutions, and taken over the health care system in this country. They've taken over the student loan, they've taken over the education system, and everybody in it is miserable and unhappy.

This country has gotten seriously off track under the Supreme Court when it went so far as to limit the right of even private citizens to freely express their religious views in public.

It's going to take an act of Congress to deal with poverty and hunger, not only in this country, but throughout the world. We have the resources but we don't have the will.

On the policy front, I just believe that Barack Obama was misguided. That he somehow sees this country as being in need of a drastic overhaul. What he tried to do actually hurt the country rather than helped it and the best example is Obamacare. It's a good idea to insure people who can't or won't buy insurance but you can't punish the working class to make it happen, which he did. Now everybody's paying higher premiums and more deductibles that's coming out of working people's pockets and that's one of the reasons that his legacy has been refuted.

You can't have the legislative and executive branch working in a parallel universe...the partisanship that has gripped Washington has prevented us from dealing with the issues that this country needs to grapple with to determine its future.

Barack Obama now says he is open to offshore oil drilling. So, apparently, when he promised change, he was talking about his mind.

We got a lot of politicians up there on Capital Hill. Ain't it funny how they prosper while the country stands still?