Policy Paralysis Quotes

Because of unsure and undecided leadership in the field of foreign policy, questions are being raised on all sides. The administration is plagued by a Hamlet-like psychosis which seems to paralyze it every time decisive action is required.

Congress does two things well: nothing and overreacting.

In the absence of a crisis, the status quo in Washington is more or less set in cement, as advocacy groups and turf-conscious government officials are able to thwart change.

Given the slow pace of Washington's bureaucracy, policymakers are often busy solving yesterday's problems. This rearview mirror approach afflicts Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

None of my Governments seem to know what to do about them

Has Washington become so dysfunctional that even when we all agree on something, we can’t get it done?

It's no great secret, number one, in my view, and I think the view of most Americans, that Congress itself is pretty dysfunctional. We are not addressing the real needs of the American people. And second of all, philosophically, there is a huge division between the House and the Senate.

Indian economy is suffering from policy paralysis and lack of optimism. I am confident that with right kind of decisions, we can once again generate hope and confidence and turnaround our economy.

They've got a Jobs Council that never meets. A Democratic Senate that doesn't act. A President who doesn't believe and a Vice President who won't stop talking. They just don't get it.

The tax code was so complicated that it took so long to master it that one lost the will to reform it.

It is folly to believe that Congress and the president, on their own, will make the necessary and difficult decisions to address the impending financial debacle. After all, they and their predecessors engineered the approaching tsunami. As the situation becomes direr, the federal government's actions will grow more oppressive.

When I became prime minister last September, I promised the Japanese people that I would not tolerate the politics of indecision. A propensity to delay difficult and weighty decisions has been hurting our country. It is detrimental to our economy, society and future, and it cannot be allowed to continue.

I never like the question about letter grades, but I think Trump is failing. I think that every day there's another set of tweets and another set of controversies, and nothing seems to be getting done that's any good. And there seems to be kind of a policy paralysis in Washington. Even the appointments he's supposed to make as a new president, so I focus most of all on climate, and so my opinion of his time as president is certainly influenced by my opinion of the job he's done on climate. He's tried to move the country in the wrong direction.

We have a paralysis in Washington that's not serving our country. We have to address these issues.

I hear people who are worried about climate change tell me, oh, Congress that's gridlock, that's not where the action is.

Americans from all walks of life have voiced their deep frustration with Washington's seeming inability to get anything constructive done. For decades, they have watched politicians talk a good game while failing to deliver.

Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.

My efforts to prevent closing of the gold window-working through Connally, Volcker, and Shultz-do not seem to have succeeded. The gold window may have to be closed tomorrow because we now have a government that is incapable, not only of constructive leadership, but of any action at all. What a tragedy for mankind!

Sometimes we're tone-deaf in Washington, and we listen only to ourselves. We do not hear the cry of people who want answers, want action, want protection, and have some darn good ideas as to how to provide it if only we would listen.

Out of politics comes more uproar than progress. It is indeed surprising how little, comparatively, this noisy department of human affairs contributes to the world's prosperity. Political commotions upon the grandest scale, political events of astounding suddenness, political characters of the greatest ability, abound, but still, permanent results are rare, and we look in vain for a measure of public good corresponding in extent to the hideous rout which ushers it in. Progress but turns upon its pillow, and goes to sleep again.

America is living through the third economic revolution and our country doesn't really have a plan on how to deal with it, and when it does - like the president sort of outlined when he first got here - we have a Congress who seem incapable of acting on it.

It is hard to stay patient about policy matters where everybody agrees about what needs to be done and then it just doesn't happen, like reforming the immigration system and getting rid of family immigration jails and closing Guantanamo and criminal-justice reform. All these issues, there is basically consensus. There's no rational objections whatsoever, but it can't happen because of other stupid steps we have to take in politics.

India lived in hopelessness, as the government was not responsive. It did not know what the poor needed. There was complete policy paralysis. Corruption was rampant, and terrorists used to play havoc in the country.

I just keep trying to explain what's going on with our planet - and now, to explain what's going on with our politics, which explains why we're not doing anything about the former.

You can't have the legislative and executive branch working in a parallel universe...the partisanship that has gripped Washington has prevented us from dealing with the issues that this country needs to grapple with to determine its future.