Compromise Negotiations Quotes

Here's the perversity of Wall Street's psychology: The more Wall Street is convinced that Washington will act rationally and raise the debt ceiling, most likely at the 11th hour, the less pressure there will be on lawmakers to reach an agreement. That will make it more likely a deal isn't reached.

I don’t care for the Presidency if it has to come by compromise with Senator Foraker. I would never strike a bargain to endorse a man who has consistently opposed the policies and programs of the Roosevelt Administration.

The reality is that the Republican Party may have unified government but is not unified enough on many major signature policy areas.

Obamacare is the wildly complex Rube Goldberg contraption it is because getting the legislation through Congress required so many political tradeoffs and so many unavoidable deals with so many vested interests. But that's no excuse.

Washington can be a frustrating place.

Overall, Congress is dysfunctional, partisan, and polarized, and it isn’t getting anything done. We need commissions to break out of divisive partisanship.

President Obama can talk about having no grand schemes and making no big gains, but the reality is he can't get anything of significance through Congress.

Partisan rancour and party politics and ideology have got in the way of compromise - and compromise is the only thing that has ever made politics successful.

While 2013 will not see a major national election, we can be sure that most Republicans will obstruct and some Democrats will appease.

When you're in a relationship with a very famous person, you have to make compromises.

Major parties have lived more for patronage than principles; their goal has been to bind together a sufficiently large coalition of diverse interests to get into power; and once in power, to arrange sufficiently satisfactory compromises of interest to remain there.

We [Congress] are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important. […] That’s not how we were meant to govern. Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise.

First, the American legislative process isn't well suited to large and complex measures.

A concrete agenda and landslide victory might not even guarantee a president his mandate in a capital as polarized as Washington.

A lot of the Republicans wanted exactly what Barack Obama wanted, exactly what Nancy Pelosi wanted, exactly what Harry Reid wanted, which is to raise the debt ceiling, but they wanted to be able to tell what they view as their foolish, gullible constituents back home they didn't do it.

What happens in the Senate is the Republicans sink to the lowest common denominator.

Adversity in politics does not encourage cohesiveness, it seems. Deprived of the fruits of power, a national political party seems to break down into regional or other factions. Unity can only be regained by victory—yet victory is forestalled by disunity.

I would like Obama to be tougher on going up against the Republicans, I don't think he should try to be so moderate.

There are more people at Obama's table offering ideas than there were five years ago, but when it came to facing up to the Republicans' threat to force a double-dip recession if they didn't get their millionaires' tax cut, they still amounted to nothing. And therein lies our fundamental problem.

It is time for Republicans in D.C. to fight. Too often, they give up; they negotiate with themselves. They said they would get rid of the unconstitutional amnesty. They didn't do that. They said they would repeal Obamacare if we gave them the majority. They didn't do that, either.

The Left has been frustrated because President Obama has allowed the Republicans to run all over him.

Today's Congress responds to everything, to everybody, to every whim.

Television is much more difficult because at every moment the network can force you to change things based on their belief about what would make it popular. You're in a constant debate with a gun at your head, and the gun is cancellation. So it's hard to win the arguments.

Any time a party has lost three consecutive elections, it becomes a bit more willing to explore the notion of principled compromise so it's able to pursue some of its objectives.

One miscalculation I made is I did not fully appreciate that the Republicans in Congress were going to just say no to everything. Even when there are ideas that have traditionally been bipartisan.