Policy Prioritization Quotes

Our government has become too responsive to trivial or ephemeral concerns, often at the expense of more important concerns or an erosion of our liberty, and it has made policy priorities more dependent on where TV journalists happen to point their cameras....

All policy is targeted in one way or another.

Lib Dems are really good at making very detailed policies but very bad are communicating the core values that drive those policies. I'd like us to say less but more often. We need to focus on a few themes and go hard on them.

You have to separate what needs to be done to avoid the fiscal cliff and what needs to be done longer range. It's a mistake to essentially collapse those two - they're not the same. I don't think you can achieve everything at once.

The problem we have had on the budget all along is a lack of adult supervision on the part of the White House. You can't blame members of Congress for looking out for their parochial interests. It is the president's responsibility to look out for the national interest.

Government cannot do everything, so we need to first decide what government ought to be doing, then figure out what it's capable of doing, and then follow the jobs we choose to completion.

President Obama has adopted a practice of picking and choosing which laws he wants to enforce. In most cases, his laws of choice conveniently coincide with his administration's political agenda.

I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all.

You need to look at Congress as having a certain capacity. Now, the capacity varies from year to year and from body to body, but there is a finite amount of things that Congress can attentively do.

It’s very hard for any administration, and I’ve worked with seven, to focus on any more than one major thing at a time.

Conservatives have the advantage of knowing how to debate each other on issues, principles, and priorities, and that is where they should engage Trump.

I think the fact that we have been focussing on politics quite a lot and the tumult of politics rather than what we should be doing in terms of policy has made, I think, voters quite grumpy.

It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose.

A lot of folks look at the political calculation and then determine the policy. I think that's backward.

In the case of climate change, the threat is long-term and diffuse and requires broad international action for the benefit of people decades in the future. And in politics, the urgent always trumps the important, and that is what makes it a very difficult and challenging issue.

The president is not required to enforce all laws equally or commit the same resources to them.