Dick Gephardt Quotations | Page 2

When you succeed (with legislation), that feeling is exhilaration. And it takes leadership from a president, which means you meet with members of Congress 24/7 and you talk and you listen.

I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction.

Politics takes patience, time, listening and endless meetings.

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.

In every issue there are winners are losers, and the losers are plenty. But they have to be willing to grudgingly accept the result. That's the genius of our democracy.

One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country.

In every issue there are winners are losers, and the losers are plenty.

Diplomacy matters. Burden-sharing matters. Follow-through matters. And yes, sustaining the peace is harder, more complex and often costlier than winning the war itself. No matter the surge of momentary machismo -- as gratifying as it may be for some -- it's short-sighted and wrong to simply go it alone.

I grew up in the '50s and '60s when Jack Kennedy was president. We would watch him on television. And our teachers always talked about the good things public servants could do. I thought maybe that's something I should do. So when I got out of law school, my wife, Jane, and I became precinct captains.

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.

Democracy is interactive... Its a constant job of information, education, explanation, listening, and interactive communication.

The real tragedy here is that over the last two years because of the intransigence of the Republicans we didn't really have a budget, we didn't do anything with Medicare, so those numbers are not as good as they could have been.

We obviously should pass a resolution by saying that we stand behind the troops. I would hope that we do not take up impeachment until the hostilities have completely ended.

We can talk about targeted tax cuts like we've been talking about, the president's been talking about. Maybe that can be married up with a proposal to raise the minimum wage.

We can take an important step today back to the politics of respect and trust and fairness and forgiveness,

You have got to remember, these are companies that have been fined in some cases over a million dollars for their errors and omissions. These are companies that were indicted after September 11, again for their failure,

We need to combine real simple tax reform along with reforming the IRS.

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,

We're talking about education, we're talking about school construction... You can't get smaller class size with just teachers, you need the buildings,

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.

Tom Daschle and I worked together on Families First every step of the way, making sure that Democrats in both the House and Senate were involved in putting the agenda together.

We all may be sorry if this bill doesn't contain the money the IMF needs, ... This is an important moment. Nobody will like a world in free-fall.

We fully support the president's decision today to undertake military action with our allies against Iraq. Saddam Hussein's defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors is a clear violation of the international community's determination to ensure that Iraq no longer poses a threat to the region.

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,

We should all follow the rule of law, and I'm positive the vice president will do that and I think George Bush will do that, ... This Week.

We walked to demonstrate our deep displeasure at the action of the majority party; they disregarded the clear will of the majority of the American people,

I voted for the Reagan tax cut (in 1981). It was a mistake, ... We have to learn from history. It was a worthy experiment, but it was a mistake and ... we don't want to make it again.

seems high to me, because once you get above the levels where the president was in his budget, you really are in the area where you're starting to raise premiums.

So this is what the lobbyists and other wealthy individuals got for their money. They get their overly generous share of the tax bill.

Any delay would have given Saddam Hussein time to reconstitute his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and undermine international support for our efforts. It also would have been contrary to the president's commitment in November to respond militarily to future Iraqi provocations.

are things that I've found when I met with the president.

As I've said many times, this is the worst Congress that's ever been in the building. They have not done their work and now they want to get everything done in one bill in the last five minutes and it's not a reasonable way to act; they've been very inept in the way they've run this Congress,

Al Gore and Joe Lieberman enjoy strong support with our caucus for what they are doing to try to get every vote counted in Florida,

You need to tell what happened in the House--the drug companies wrote the bill, and they wouldn't even let us bring up our alternative. It's a total capitulation to special interests! Keep going.

This congress has spent most of the year debating tax cuts for the wealthiest that left no money for debt reduction, basic appropriations, or anything else,

This administration has no plan, no vision, no answer beyond simplistic knee-jerk tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

A lot of the economy is psychological perception, ... And we have created the perception this bill was going to happen. If we now withdraw it because we can't get a huge tax break for corporate America in it, we're going to really cause problems in this economy.

A lot of this is uncertain. A lot has not been pinned down, ... This thing is moving faster than it should.

A lot of what our firm does is unrelated to direct lobbying of members. When you are solving tough problems for your client, you realize that affecting something through the political process may be only one little part of the solution.

They have been following a budget that is faulty, and instead of sitting down with the president and with us and coming up with a consensus budget, they've been following this faulty budget,

the Republicans had tremendous amounts of special interest money. The pharmaceutical companies spent probably $50 million or $60 million supporting all Republican candidates and that blurred a lot of the issue on prescription drugs.

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.

This is the number one issue all across the United States today,

This is the most important election in my lifetime. We must defeat George Bush in November, ... John Kerry has the life experience, the personal character and strength.

They realize they can't hold the majority unless they spend millions in soft money,

It's a worrisome fact, and we need to look into it and find out what really went on.

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.

I told him we needed to try to work better together and I would try to make that happen, ... And he seemed positive about it.

I told the president on 9/12, the day after 9/11, that we had to trust one another, that we had to try to put politics aside, to try to prevent further acts of terrorism,

It's one thing to talk the talk, it's another thing to walk the walk, ... We've got to get labor and environment in these treaties, and we've got to do it when the treaties are before the Congress. That's when it counts.

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.

strongly supporting everything that's being done in this contest by the Gore-Lieberman ticket.

It was a mistake. . . . I was wrong,

not be willing to leave this building for the holidays until we get that done.

They choose the tax cuts over extending the solvency of Social Security and Medicare,

These numbers are bouncing around. This is a volatile race,

a partisan vote that was a disgrace to our country and our Constitution.

I'm glad President Bush unveiled his reform ideas last week, ... but we need to go further if we really want to clean up this system.

I'm not going to say what's fashionable in our politics.

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 grave danger of weakening the world economy.

indicates to me once again that the delay wasn't to go through the committee. The delay was to allow the NRA to lobby.

In light of the gravity of the charges outlined in the guilty verdict against Mr. Traficant, I think the prudent course of action would be an immediate resignation,

I have not stated in any conversation with anyone that I'm going to run for the presidential nomination.

I'm very proud of what we've achieved ... but there is, however, a large unfinished agenda.

In 1993, as House Democratic Leader, I led the fight to pass the Clinton-Gore economic plan - a plan designed to slash the deficit, invest in education, cut taxes for working families, and ask the wealthy among us to pay their fair share... Not one Republican voted for that plan. They said it was a job killer.

If the president can get an agreement with the Republicans that is fair and reasonable and honest and it does not violate, as I'm sure it would not, his principles and our principles and beliefs, he ought to do that,

If the Republicans had been willing to come to the middle and compromise and reach a consensus on the budget then we could have gotten the budget balanced last year, we could have done it the year before.

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.

In November, Al Gore will be elected president of the United States and we will take back the House,

I refuse to accept that while we stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the war, we should stand toe-to-toe on the economy,

In fact, I'm sure the answers are not all here and they are not in state legislatures and city councils, ... We really have to figure out how to change the human heart.

Clearly, the election is going to be won in the Midwest and the Rust Belt, places where President Bush has been campaigning -- Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio -- places very similar to Iowa.

Howard Dean travels the country and yells and pounds the podium against NAFTA, against the secrecy of the Bush-Cheney White House and against insider corporate deals.

How can we decide on the fairness of the process without determining what is in the interviews, grand jury testimony and boxes of documents that, for totally unexplained reasons, the Independent Counsel withheld?

He said ... Medicare was the worst federal program ever, ... Howard, you were agreeing with the very plan that Newt Gingrich wanted to pass, which was a $270 billion cut in Medicare.

I cannot condone the relationship the president has acknowledged and I am very disappointed in his personal conduct. I do however respect the responsibility he has taken for his action.

I do, however, respect the responsibility he has taken for his action and I am hopeful he and his family can find the peace and privacy they will need to see them through what must be a very painful time in their lives, ... It is my most fervent hope for the nation that this investigation can be brought to its long overdue conclusion, and that in the days ahead, the president and the Congress can pour our energies into a meaningful agenda for the country.

You can't go on, it shouldn't have happened. We've got to come back and start over again and write a good bill,

a greater emphasis on political positioning than serious policy solutions.

You've been saying for many months that you're the head of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. I think you're just winging it. This is not the view of Democrats.

All that President Bush has to offer those workers and other Americans struggling in this bad economy is more unaffordable, unsustainable and patently unfair tax cuts,