John Breaux Quotes

Bipartisanship may be abnormal, but it does occur. The challenge is to explain why it occurs at all, and why it never lasts.

I have a long, long record of working with Democrats and Republicans alike.

Working together during the past three years, we have confounded the skeptics and the cynics. We've shown that here in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans can come together, put politics aside, and make tough decisions when times demand it.

Bipartisanship is “the oil of national government.”

To get Congress working again, I'm dedicated to working with anyone who has an open mind, good ideas, and a willingness to work together.

The term bipartisanship, that's a means to an end. That's not something that I think you run on. I think you run on solutions.

I'm a strong believer in bipartisanship.

The one thing I'm convinced George W. Bush is good at is bipartisanship. It's clearly something he enjoys personally.

But if we can work with people in other parties to get the right answer for the country we'll do that.

Whether we're Democrats or Republicans or independents, we have to learn to hang together or we're gonna hang separately.

I'm a believer in bipartisanship.

I've thought about it, not a lot, but I thought my relationship with Congress - the Democrats and Republicans - would help me get some things done. Not everything, but at least they'd be willing to try.

What I like about Bain Capital is that we have Republicans, we have Democrats, we have independents; we are a diverse firm in terms of political views. But what we do is we sit down and we try to solve the problems.

If you look through history, all of the great work we've done in Congress has been around a table of compromise, when it comes to the most difficult problems.

I do hope that next year Republicans and Democrats will do nothing.

Goodness knows, we have horrible problems to face in this Congress. I hope we can face them as colleagues in working unitedly for the people of this country and certainly not indulging in animosity or referring to each other as ''enemies.''

Bipartisanship means you work together to work it out.

Sometimes the Senate really does rise above politics. It’s rare, but sometimes it happens.

My Republican compatriots do not feel that people ought to work with Democrats across the aisle—Compromise is a bad word.

Though she is a proud native of one of the most famously liberal cities in the country, Feinstein has earned a reputation over the years in the Senate as someone eager to work across the aisle with Republicans.

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.

The only way Democrats can govern in this country is by making common cause with moderates and independents.

The system requires bipartisanship.

In politics, you have to compromise from morning to evening. Democracy is the art of compromise.

If I have learned anything from my time in Congress, it is that the only way we are going to solve the big problems our country faces is by working together.