Public Policy Analysis Quotes

I was quite convinced that I didn't want to be a lawyer. But I felt that law school would be a useful way to understand public policy and to understand business in this environment.

GAO studies often put the lie to these lobbying vehicles.

It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than prompted, by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it.

Pat Moynihan wrote more books than most of his colleagues in the senate ever read.

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated.

The contemporary political scientist believes that he can avoid the necessity of moral judgments and that he can help frame public policy without committing himself to any ethical position.

Why do Americans find government so baffling and irritating-even though many of us depend on public programs for a secure retirement, an affordable mortgage, or a college loan? In this timely and important book, political scientist Suzanne Mettler explains how the United States has come to rely on hidden, indirect policies that privilege special interests but puzzle regular citizens. American democracy can do better, and she shows how. Politicians and the public alike have much to learn from her brilliant and engaging analysis.