Dick Gephardt People Quotations

I hope we can get back to what I call the kitchen table. Everyday issues that people are really worried about and focused on.

My dad was a Teamster, ... I think there are a lot of working families out there that want a candidate for president and want a president that will remember the struggle that people go through every day to make a living, to raise their kids, to educate their kids, to have health care for their family.

I don't think we've done enough to train ourselves and the staff and media people that are in this building for how we're going to get out of this building in the case of an attack, ... I think we need to repeatedly train for how to get out.

If the economy is still going forward, even at 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour, I think most people will stick with President Obama. I think people look at politics like they hire a plumber. I hire you to fix the bad pipe. If you fix it, I'll rehire you. If you don't fix it, I'm not going to rehire you.

We've got to give people confidence to go back out and go to work, buy things, go back to the stores -- get ready for Thanksgiving, get ready for Christmas, ... Get out and be active, participate in our society.

We think a 10 percent across-the-board cut assigns about 80 percent of the benefits to the top 20 percent of taxpayers. We'd much rather prefer targeted tax cuts that really go to people who need that tax cut for a particular reason,

I think it's a really poor statement. It's disingenuous. On the one hand, he says it's a good thing -- and then in the next breath, he says it doesn't make it us any safer. ... How can anybody say we're safer with Saddam Hussein loose in the world torturing his people and causing all the problems he's caused for 30 years?

I think the American people said very clearly -- they rejected the extremism of the Republicans. That's why we won seats in the House. So, if they got the message from the American people that we have, we can meet in the middle and get these things done.

I said, 'This is a matter of life and death, and we've got to do our best to work together to keep our people safe.' And I've really tried to do that. I found him to be hard to help.

President Bush's public relations cover-up for the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover isn't working. The American people see right through it,

President Bush has not yet lived up to his promise to be a reformer with results, ... During the campaign, he said he would fight for bipartisan bills with strong support from all Americans. But instead of putting people first, too often he has put special interests first.

I think people in the days ahead are going to really wonder what has happened on those issues.

We in the Democratic Party feel strongly that the people in the middle, the people stuck on the bottom, are the people we need to be giving the majority of this tax cut.

We've got the biggest army on the ground. And we've connected with voters out here ... People are ready to go today. I was all over the state yesterday. We've got lots of excitement.

Unlike the Contract with America, which was created by Washington pollsters and insiders, Families First was developed from the grassroots up. Congressional Democrats from across the country spent months meeting with people back home, asking them what issues were important to them, and what Congress could do to make their lives a little easier.

I think when everything is finally considered, I'll have a lot of support -- strong support -- not only from labor unions but from working people.

The people I'm honored to represent in Missouri and all over the country want leaders to address their kitchen table everyday problems.

One of the big mistakes Republicans made with the Contract with America is that they tried to do too much too fast, and people revolted against it.

Why would we want to keep a tax cut that's failed? Why would we not want to go back to the Clinton tax code? And why would we not want to help every family more with a health-care plan like mine? Let's help average people. Let's be Democrats.

America is a great country. We are so wealthy. But our one remaining challenge is to fulfill the potential of all our people. And the only way we can do that is to try to bring everybody together to a higher place.

We're the leaders and we've got to lead. And you lead by example. And you lead by working with people that we haven't worked so well with together in the past,

You cannot short-circuit and push all 535 people out of the room and make the decision between two or three people. We are not going to let them run over people's right to understand what's in the bill.

We have a big job of reconciling the people in Iraq. We need to pull together that international coalition that we should have gotten together a long time ago,

This is war. And we will do everything in our power together to make sure that terrorists never, ever again can create this mayhem, this chaos, this violence against our people and our country.

It is our view and we believe it's the view of the American people that this investigation be done as quickly as humanly possible, ... Given this will ... the choice is clear. We can resolve on a bipartisan effort to do the work that needs to be done in the next 30 days in the House or we might face two years of ongoing hearings.

It's an outrage to the senior citizens and the people of the United States, ... We will not rest until we get that benefit in law.

I hope we can get back to what I call the kitchen table, ... Everyday issues that people are really worried about and focused on.

In the context of trying to ask for shared sacrifice and get the budget into balance, the Republicans are saying in the midst of making all these decisions let us give a rip-roaring tax cut to people at the very top, ... It takes your breath away.