Bruce Josten Quotations

When this deal first surfaced late Thursday, the business community was just shocked. Instantly, if not rather simultaneously, people started making calls to the Senate leadership, to the staff of the Senate Finance Committee. It was the wholesalers, the manufacturers, the mass retailers.

I don't think it is a slam dunk, but I don't think there's much doubt that John Roberts crosses the finish line.

We've evaluated a bunch of these now, ... We've determined you can't possibly predict how they're going to rule on a certain set of facts in a given case.

Reform is critical if we are to encourage businesses to offer a pension benefit now, while many workers still have time to build for their retirement. Without reform, more workers will be forced to rely on Social Security, which is already facing financial difficulty.

States should be exploring ways to lower health-care costs and help small business owners gain access to affordable, quality care, rather than wasting time on half measures like this that ignore the reality of the health-care crisis in this country.

We will actively encourage our members to stop providing health care as a voluntary benefit because it makes no sense.

We need to have more access to more markets abroad, not less access.

We do have a concern about the potential for retaliation in the trade space.

This will accomplish very little, and this totally misses the mark, which is to take appropriate steps to slow the kind of double-digit health care increases we've seen. This is so far off the mark it's incredible.

Why are we going to put this yoke on corporate America's neck? This is a problem for everybody in the country.

When you are talking about a budget for 2007 of $2,400bn, I don't want to sound crass, but $9bn is a rounding error.

While the security of the American people and our critical infrastructure must always be a top priority, implementing the laws that could harm the health of our economy in the name of national security would be a grave mistake. All parties involved must strive to find a balance that keeps us safe while at the same time allows our economy to continue to flourish.

Everybody in the business community started screaming simultaneously.

The calendar says they will be in session for 120 days, but when you subtract Mondays and Fridays, which are travel days, that drops to 74, so it's a very short playing field. At some point, you have to see what's politically achievable.

The business community is convinced we are going to have a pension bill.

They have got a lot to do in a compressed time frame and a lot to resolve between the chambers.

This law will help make the world a miserable place for counterfeiters. Next, we need greater coordination among enforcement agencies to enforce the laws on the books and bring these criminals who engage in counterfeiting and piracy to justice.

The bill closes some glaring loopholes in current trademark law and provides much-needed tools to enhance criminal-enforcement efforts.

If there's going to be retaliation, which frequently takes place in the trade world the kind of retaliation would be either tariff barriers, non-tariff barriers, or prohibitions similar to any that the Congress of the United States may choose to impose on the ports deal. How could that be good for the world's largest exporter, which is the United States, with 30 percent of our economy dependent on (international) trade?

If Oxley had more control over that process and the timing, I just don't think we would have the law that resulted.

I don't think this boils down to a 30-second spiel with anybody.

He believes in the need to get this economy back on a high growth track, to increase productivity so we can have higher wages and incomes.