Political Responsibilities
Page 10
- In the 2012 election, Obamacare, as it's called, and I'll be more polite - the ACA …was a major issue in the campaign. I campaigned all over America for two months, everywhere I could. And in every single campaign rally I said, 'We have to repeal and replace Obamacare.' Well, the people spoke. They spoke, much to my dismay, but they spoke. And they reelected the President of the United States.
- It’s very hard from a distance to figure out who has lost their minds. One party, the other party, all of us, the president.
- But let's remember the reasons the Iranians say they're here now is that that economy is suffering desperately under the weight of sanctions. They want relief from the sanctions. My concern is they're going to want relief from the sanctions before they do anything to deserve it.
- The fact that the senators aren’t here and Harry Reid is off somewhere is all the evidence that you need to know that they want to shut down the government. I personally believe that Sen. Reid and the president — for political purposes — want to shut down the government.
- Congress needs to send a strong signal that direct communication with the leader of the free world is a privilege, particularly for a regime that has been as hostile as Iran has been towards America for more than three decades. President Rouhani needs to take these two simple steps to demonstrate good faith before any further discussions.
- Hey, you know if Ted Cruz runs out of material there to speak of in this filibuster of his, he can always just read the Obamacare bill itself, because I bet you no one else there on the Senate floor has actually read it. If he would read it, though, then perhaps Nancy Pelosi, she’d be watching the C-SPAN station there, and she’d be able to say, ‘Oh, that is what is in it.
- But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society. Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless another citizen or other classes have been forced to send it in. If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in, it is true, then, that the law plunders nobody. But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money. It does not promote equality of income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only when it takes from some persons and gives to others, other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.
- Tactics and strategies ought to be based on what the real world is, and we do not have the political power to do this. We're not about to shut the government down over the fact that we cannot, only controlling one house of Congress, tell the president that we’re not going to fund any portion of [Obamacare]. Because we can’t do that.
- I think I've learned one thing about this president, and that is he's very cautious. Maybe - in this instance - too cautious.
- The issue that a political campaign would make a human life into - you know - a political football, is unsettling.
- And on a strategic note, Miss Cottle: before we enter the 2016 election cycle and the feminists come asking black women for our support for your candidate, you might want to read up a bit on black women and our feminism. I can send you a syllabus.
- This is the way it has to be. The Senate has changed.