Hank Brown Quotes

Lobbying, in large part, is conducted to prevent change from happening.

There’s a sausage machine on Capitol Hill. We’ve given the sausage machine the right kind of ingredients. Now it’s up to the sausage machine to turn out the right kind of legislation.

I noticed that the highly organized lobbies in Washington were producing results regardless of the justice or injustice of their demand.

If you can’t move the public, you can’t move the Congress.

Politics is about power, and it is about group power.

I've seen senators, whose character and intelligence I know reasonably well, vote a certain way just because staff tells them to.

You cannot rely on House or Senate staff to pass a piece of legislation for you, but if you have antagonized staff, they can block you.

Members of Congress often have to have testimony to hang their hat on if they wish to do something for you or do something for the country.

We have too much legislation by clamor, tumult and pressure.

Policy and politics are always mixed up.

Sometimes political parties have a very short window to influence public policy

Access is an earned, essential raw material for the lobbying process but vastly overrated as a finished product all by itself. No dam was ever built ... solely on the basis of access.

You cannot make elected officials … do what they will not do.

The employment had no reference whatever to anything pending in Congress.

Hardly a week goes by where somebody doesn't tell me that they won't support me unless I vote a certain way.

The lobbyists are a kind of permanent other government.

Public opinion is very important in the United States. It affects the way Congress deals with issues.

Policy makers do the right thing only if the public makes as much noise as possible.

You can get from a politician whatever you demand in this country. The great irony is that everybody complains about how it runs but not enough people direct their force and power directly at the politicians and make demands upon them. Ours is a system that abhors remoteness. If you're remote from this political system, it'll kill you.

As much as the Congress is criticized - and a lot of it is well deserved - the fact is there are many quiet victories if you keep your head down and know how to maneuver in the process and get things done.

To get Congress to do anything.

The challenge has been, we make policy in the world of politics.

Unfortunately, I think it's very difficult to separate policy from politics. In a perfect world, in some instances, you probably would want to. In other instances, you'd probably say that the political element is important because it should, in a perfect world, match what the stakeholders need or want, or what the public is after.

It is provided by the Constitution that the President shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

At the end of the day, the government, local government all bow to public pressure.