Policy Compromise Quotes

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a successful compromise in 1993; and so that compromise should remain.

I felt that what you should do is really take the best from each party's agenda and come to a solution somewhere above the positions of each party. So from the Left, take the idea that we need day care and food supplements for people on welfare. From the Right, take the idea that they have to work for a living and that there are time limits.

It has been shown that public participation can limit powerful interest groups, while competing interests can help find a reasonable balance between development and environmental protection.

The big policy wins of the New Deal were actually offered as compromises. Because the alternative seemed to be revolution.

It was the Congress that imposed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.

I liked working with Republicans. We had five pretty good years after we had that bad year in '95 that culminated in two government shutdowns. But then they really decided that they liked being in the majority for the first time in forty years, and they wanted to get some things done, and I agreed, to get things I wanted. It was all perfectly transparent. Everybody knew what they wanted and what I wanted.

You can't go out and adopt Democrat policies all the way or halfway to show that you're not what they think you are.

The Trump team recognizes the importance of the House Freedom Caucus.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Trump supporters are fed up with about the Republican Party, how easy it is for so many in the Republican Party to sell out the party and join the Democrats - or not sell out the party, but stay within the party and advance the Democrats' agenda, be it with amnesty and immigration, abortion, who knows whatever it is.

While the other parties look at polls and focus groups to decide what they stand for, and pander to every special interest group, we follow our principles.

Politics is different, because the mission is always to get the necessary votes. A good politician goes through everything in terms of mission and vision, and resourcing, but at the end of the day politicians have to make compromises in order to achieve consensus.

I think on this issue more than any other we're going to see sort of a bipartisan longing to get something done, and hopefully you're not going to find the fisticuffs that you would find on lots of other issues. I think you'll be able to glean a sense of progress without us revealing the specifics.

No one's interested really in knowing what policies or diplomatic initiatives or arms negotiations might have been compromised by me.

By their own admission, leaders of the Republican Revolution of 1994 think their greatest mistake was overlooking the power of the veto. They gave the impression they were somehow in charge when they weren't.

When you involve yourself in a group like No Labels, …I think it is a positive step in the right direction of trying to get things done

Whether we agree with them or not, politicians aren't for trusting. They are for getting done what can be done to make really horrible problems into plain old lousy problems.

One of the really positive things about minority government is that there is the necessity to broker policy positions. What happens is you get a hybrid of what a single party might do. And I don't think that is a bad thing.