Congress & Legislation
Page 9
- Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability – terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons – or should we focus on global climate instability – droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse.
- There is no debate in the scientific community…We need [Congress] to change things, not to deny what's happening.
- When I stepped off the plane here in Washington, DC, I remember reflecting on the great words of Jesus: 'turn the other cheek, forgive seventy-times-seven' - and I thought, 'that'll get me through the first week.
- I don't think Edward Snowden deserves a death penalty or life in prison. I think that's inappropriate. I think that's why he fled, [because] that is what he faced.
- I view the United States, today, much like East Berlin. And I'm off the grid. I've tried for 20 years to warn the country about the Democrats and Republicans, and nobody's listening.
- All political movements are like this: we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.
- You can’t build a base for a candidacy in a year, or two years, or even four years. The only way to get candidates worth having is to build the social force that will create candidates worth having.
- There is one lesson from the past, in particular, that we cannot afford to ignore: You cannot make progress on gender equality or broader human development without safeguarding women’s reproductive health and rights.
- My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.
- I'm just a guy who got asked to do something for his country by people at the highest level of government, and I did the best that I could.
- I got to be a leader of HHS during these most historic times. We are on the front lines of a long overdue national change — fixing a broken health system. Now, this is the most meaningful work I’ve ever been a part of. In fact, it’s been the cause of my life. And I knew it wouldn’t be easy. There’s a reason that no earlier President was successful in passing health reform, despite decades of attempts.
- Prostitution thrives in the United States. We focus in this country on punishing the girls. For every brothel owner or pimp or male customer, there are 50 girls who are arrested for being prostitutes. Other countries have tried the other way around, and it works beautifully…they bring the charges against the brothel owners and the pimps and the male customers, and they do not prosecute the girls, who quite often are brought into that trade involuntarily. It works quite well, by the way.