I do believe that being in public office is all about making choices. And if I'm president, I would steer this nation in a direction where we embrace progressive values.
Like, for example, way back then,[George W.] Bush could have passed immigration reform, just like [Barack] Obama could have when he first came in. And both of them passed on it, so now they leave it for now.
Washington - having spent a lot of time there, I grew up there and have spent a lot of time there recently - is largely defined by detailed analytical views and policy choices that are not very good. You know, each policy choice has a winner and a loser, right? Somebody's ox is getting gored.
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.
You can drive yourself crazy trying to peer into a person's soul--or you can do the sensible thing: ask not what inner motives drive a politician's policy choices but instead whether those choices are good for the country.
A judge's role is to ensure that the legislature remains within the limits of its assigned authority under the Constitution. Judges have no authority to second-guess the wisdom of the value judgments and policy choices the legislature has made.
In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn’t pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation’s fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity - just empty sermons.
What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.
There are too many bad policy choices to go into that are being pushed by the Trump Administration, but the relaxation of environmental regulations and corporate and banking regulations alone are enough to keep me busy and should be a big concern for every citizen who isn't a billionaire and likes to breathe air.
Do we go back and be the mushy middle party? Or do we have conservative, principled ideas for all the issues of the day, from the economy, from foreign policy, defence, security, that's the choice.
To prepare adequately for the challenge of global warming, we must acknowledge both the good and the bad that it will bring. If our starting point is to prove that Armageddon is on its way, we will not consider all of the evidence, and will not identify the smartest policy choices.
Through basic science literacy, people can understand the policy choices we need to be making. Scientists are not necessarily the greatest communicators, but science and communication is one of the fundamentals we need to address. People are interested.
I think politics today is all about false choices: You can have a robust energy economy and a challenged environment, or a great environment and no economy. That's a false choice. You can do both.
We need a much better understanding of the climate before making policy choices that would impose substantial economic costs on our Nation.
Faced with the alternative of saying goodbye to the gold standard, and therefore to his own employment, and goodbye to other people's employment, Mr. Churchill characteristically selected the latter course.
If I had to choose Reaganomics or 13 staffers quitting, I think for the average working American, Reaganomics was a much better deal.
We now know that climate action does not require economic sacrifice. This is fully in line with the World Bank Group's findings. It is up to all of us to make smart policy choices that will help combat climate change. For example, putting a price on carbon is a necessary step and could drive resources and investments to a cleaner economy.
Whatever happens in a government could have happened differently, and it usually would have been better if it had.
[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.
I don't think if we had been able to make that choice rationally, we would have said that's what we want to do. We would have said: "Can't we save the banks and solve our health care problems?" The answer is yes. You could have.
