We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don't starve. Those are values, too.
Biking through New York's boroughs in 2005, I thought about some old friends, Joe and Eileen Bailey. Though they are imaginary, I frequently talk to them.
But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.
The companies move labor to the lowest-cost markets. And so I don`t - I used to support these agreements. In the Congress, I lost the AFL-CIO endorsement a few years because I supported them. But when middle class incomes are declining, these agreements don`t work well for America.
The greatest problem America faces is the decline of middle class incomes.
The dome of the U.S. Capitol has fallen into severe disrepair... As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which oversees matters of the Capitol's physical plant, I have serious concerns about the consequences of omitting this funding from the stopgap spending measure.
I am deeply skeptical of trade deals in general.But the only way they can get a number of Democrats is by doing a strong real currency bill that goes after the worst of the trading partners, the one that`s stealing our high-end jobs.
If we say the Geneva Convention is obsolete, then what do others who have our soldiers say?
Ideological warriors whether from the Left or the Right are bad news for the bench. They tend to make law, not interpret law. And that's not what any of us should want from our judges.
This bill [Immigration Reform and Control act of 1986] is a gamble, a riverboat gamble. There is no guarantee that employer sanctions will work or that amnesty will work. We are headed into uncharted waters.
If the Saudis were culpable, they should be held accountable. If they had nothing to do with 9/11, they have nothing to fear.
I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.
If other cows with mad cow disease were slaughtered, we wouldn't know where to begin looking for people who might have been affected, .. With a comprehensive tracking system, we would.
I think on this issue more than any other we're going to see sort of a bipartisan longing to get something done, and hopefully you're not going to find the fisticuffs that you would find on lots of other issues. I think you'll be able to glean a sense of progress without us revealing the specifics.
In education, I'm going to try to find what works. One thing I want to do is improve the quality of teachers. There are a lot of people who want to go into teaching; it's fundamentally a very fulfilling profession. But people don't feel they have financial support. We pay starting teachers in particular too little to attract the quality people that we need. I want to make it easier for good people who want to go into teaching to do that.
I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk.
The highest priority you can have is education.
I'm still basically an idealist, which translates into getting real things done to make people's lives better.
When a nominee doesn't get 60 votes, you shouldn't change the rules, you should change the nominee.
My car was broken into four times before it was stolen. That can drive you nuts - the repetition. I'd wake up every morning and put on my jeans over my pajamas to run down and see if my car was still on the street. That's not a pleasant way to live.
When the President starts talking about something, it makes a difference.
An economic message, an economic platform unites the factory worker in Scranton, the young woman in Los Angeles struggling to pay her college debt and the single mom in Buffalo who's on minimum wage.
I think Donald Trump is trying to use populist rhetoric to cover up a right-wing agenda.
Our job is going to be to hold Donald Trump and the Republican majority accountable.
I support the death penalty for the kingpin, the guy at the top, but I don't think you should throw a drug offender in jail for five years, and let a mugger out after a year.
