Justin Amash Quotes

Putting the budget ahead of the policy is the wrong way to do it. It's too often the way it's done in Washington.

So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.

I'd be a lot more excited about eliminating earmarks if we reduced all of the spending by whatever the earmarks used to be, but nobody's, apparently, going to talk about doing that.

I think what both Republicans and Democrats need to do and the leaders on both sides is to recognize that if sequester takes place, it would be disastrous for our national defense and very frankly for a lot of very important domestic programs. They have a responsibility to come together, find the money necessary to de-trigger sequester.

The closest thing you ever get to a cut is a decrease in the rate of increase of government spending.

Those who make the most and loudest speeches about deficit reduction are least likely to vote against spending.

The function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as I understand it, is to resist all demands for expenditure made by his colleagues and, when he can no longer resist, to limit the concession to the barest point of acceptance.

One of Mitt Romney’s spokespeople said, “we will not be dictated to by the fact checkers”. What that really means is “we will not be dictated to by the facts.” But the changing demographics is a fact. The Republicans may not compromise with the Democrats, but they are going to have to compromise with reality.

Democracy in the United States takes politicians who are reasonable in private and it churns them through a public process that is almost tailor-made to undermine their virtues. Perpetually kissing up to the voters destroys the leadership qualities the voters are looking for in the first place: tranquility of spirit, independence of mind and a sensitivity to the contours and complexity of reality.

I wasn't looking for a hobby. If I were looking for a hobby, it wouldn't be the United States Senate. That's one of the toughest jobs I'd probably ever do. I just felt there wasn't enough compromise going on: People were too far to the left, too far to the right, with no one trying to build a compromise.

A lawmaker cannot be pro-sequester while also purporting to be pro-national security or supportive of a strong economy.

There is no ground on which House Republican leaders should compromise until Democrats are finally ready to give up their spending addiction.

I am very glad that Paul Ryan left the government as a capitulating supplicant to Donald Trump while the government was shut down, while the debt hit record levels, right? Every single thing Paul Ryan claimed to care about.

We are more polarized. And some of that comes from the people and some of that comes from the media.

It's a shame that the president doesn't embrace the effort to reduce spending. None of us like using situations like the sequester or the debt ceiling or the operation of government to try to engage the president to deal with this.

Nothing gets done (in Congress) unless it's bipartisan. And the reason that matters is that it's a function of reality.

The Bush Administration, and particularly Bush's chief political strategist and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, have been expert in both galvanizing and mobilizing the fears and resentments of people. A good part of their politics consists of being against others who are defined in stereotypical terms. These others don't, in actual reality, exist. The so-called Democratic elitists, for example, are a stereotype who they can hate. Anyone who watches Fox News or listens to Rush Limbaugh knows that this hatred of the other is at the core of their politics.

In Washington, when you’re a leader, you have to put aside partisan politics to do what’s right for the people.

There's never a perfect bipartisan bill in the eyes of a partisan.

The whole notion of politics is they always present you with this or this or this. I’ll get a newspaper to read between the lines. Why do you have to adhere to prescribed formulas that they have and people argue over them and they’re all in a box. And you watch Fox claw CNN, and CNN claw Fox. Sometimes I catch a piece of the news and it seems insanity to me. I quietly support candidates. I’m not out there banging a drum for candidates. But I have supported a candidate and it’s a whole other world.

You want to do tax reductions, you want to do permanent tax reduction, reductions in spending. You've got to go out and explain it to the people, get them on your side and have them become the levers that you need in congressional relations.

We've always known that Democrats are anti-war, and we've always known that we can't really count on them when it comes to national defense. But we have finally seen with whom they will go to war: the American people who disagree with them.

[Bush Hating] undermines the good faith necessary for democratic discussion. Which is a large part of what people like Al Franken are all about.

Tolerance is an admirable intellectual gift; but it is of little worth in politics.