Government Function Quotes

Don't make government work like a business... it's inherently inefficient.

If the presidency is the head of the American body politic, Congress is its gastrointestinal tract. Its vast and convoluted inner workings may be mysterious and unpleasant, but in the end they excrete a great deal of material whose successful passage is crucial to our nation's survival.

I think what Americans need and what Mainers need more than anything is government that functions and I think that the filibuster prevents us from functioning and making progress on issues.

The primary function of the government is - and here I am quoting directly from the U.S. Constitution - 'to spew out paper.'

The first role of government is to help people who are in crisis or need. That's why we have government.

All government is an ugly necessity.

There's a real danger in the way our representative government functions today. It functions properly only when paired with accountability.

The overreach of the judiciary can be attributed to, one, the inability of the executive to deliver; and two, the tendency to issue judicial pronouncements for national good. The second element is dangerous because that's the function of the government.

Our government cannot function cloaked in secrecy. It cannot function unless officials tell the truth.

Trust: Our system of government does not function without it.

The debate on how to shrink the federal government is at the core of our problem of government not doing its job.

What is the purpose of the government? When you examine most political debates, you usually find that question at the bedrock. What makes a government good? What makes one effective? What is government supposed to do, and what shouldn’t it do? The reason we disagree so much about politics is often because we hold different theories about what the purpose of government is.

Vice president: A spare tire on the automobile of government.

A constitution cannot possibly enumerate the means by which the powers of government are to be carried into execution.

The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.

Government has ceased to mean upholding and reinforcing the traditional rights and morals of the governed; it now means compulsion in the service of social engineering.

The only conduct that merits the drastic remedy of impeachment is that which subverts our system of government or renders the president unfit or unable to govern.

The federal government is basically an insurance company with an army.

The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the defense of the realm, and other matters - raising revenue to pay for things which are for all of us, and so on. That idea has turned turtle now. The state isn't any longer perceived as an institution which exists to serve us.

The function of government is to provide you with service; the function of the media is to supply the Vaseline.

Usually the president is kind of the initiator of the idea, then Congress makes it work.

Congress has lost its capacity to manage itself.

I don't know if I've seen in the Constitution where it says if there's an election year, then we take a break until after for us to do the business of the American people.

I'm not in favor of no government. You do need a government. But by doing so many things that the government has no business doing, it cannot do those things which it alone can do well. There's no other institution in my opinion that can provide us with protection of our life and liberty. However, the government performs that basic function poorly today, precisely because it is devoting too much of its efforts and spending too much of our income on things which are harmful. So I have no doubt that that's the major single problem we face.

It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.