Thomas S. Foley Quotes
We'll vote when we have the votes.
The speaker was having trouble with some of his own party members in passing the President's budget. The press wanted to know when he would bring the budget to a vote.
Thomas S. Foley, 1929-2013, U. S. Congressman (Democrat, WA), U. S. Ambassador to Japan, Response to reporter's question, May 25, 1993
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This quotation illustrates the "winner take all" conceopt of many political cultures that call themselves and think of theselves as a democracy. But a true democracy does not allow a tyranny of the majority--especially a very narrow minority.
In the struggle for political power, this is often forgotten. During the Barak Administration, the President proposed measures that had been introduced and supported by his Republican opponents earlier. But they then not only failed to support them but often filibustered in the Senate to block them. The Democrats failed to support some of their ideas when President Eisenhower introduced them.
The House Rules Committee had evolved into a very powerful committee which controlled the debate rules of every piece of legislation that came before the House. This Congress—the worst in American History—passed fewer bills than any other. Those that ever got out of the Rules Committee had Rules that prohibited the minority from even offering amendments.
He was referring to Russian elections. The reasons that elections in Russia are not necessary for legitimizing state power to be used by the current government, is that from the early days of the Russian Czars, the tradition and culture assumed that if there is a threat to "Mother Russia", everyone and everything in the state is at the disposal of the government, no matter who is in power. It is so strongly embedded in the culture that although many Russians want fee elections and the right to choose their leaders, they have no question that the government alway has the right and duty to marshall amm the human and physical resources to protect the state, See Quotation 644072 for more on this imporatnt concept in Russia.
Thomas Stephen Foley was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 49th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1989 to 1995. A member of the Democratic Party, Foley represented Washington's fifth district for thirty years (1965–1995). He was the first Speaker of the House since 1862 to be defeated in a re-election campaign.
