Public Policy Quotes

Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable, the art of the next best.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.

The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Politics is about making institutions work somewhat better, helping people’s lives at the margins

Politics have no relation to morals.

I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful - but also very harmful to our society.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it

After the vision of the anointed was given increasing scope in the education and public policy of the United States and other Western societies during the decades beginning with the 1960s, the social degeneration became palpable, documented beyond issue, and immense across a wide spectrum of social phenomena—declining educational standards, rising crime rates, broken homes, soaring rates of teenage pregnancy, growing drug usage, and unprecedented levels of suicide among adolescents. This social devastation was not due to poverty, for the material standard of living was rising substantially during this time. It was not due to repression, for an unprecedented variety of new “rights” emerged from the courts and legislatures to liberate people from the constraints of the law while they were being liberated from social constraints by the spread of “nonjudgmental” attitudes. Neither was this social degeneration due to the disruptions of war or natural catastrophes, for it was an unusually long period of peace, and science conquered many diseases that had plagued the human race for centuries, as well as providing better ways of protecting people from earthquakes and other destructive acts of nature. It was instead an era of self-inflicted wounds.

Politics is who gets what, when, how.

Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.

Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.

I think politics are a part of life, so I have no resistance to it, but it's not something I set out to do.

Our country is the richest in the history of the world. We should be working to expand and improve successful programs like Medicare, and offer more to our citizens.

There was a time that I questioned the government's role in abortion.

I believe honor thy mother and father is not just a good commandment to live by, it is good public policy to govern by. That is why I feel so strongly about Medicare.

In 1996, Bill Clinton declared the era of big government over in the State of the Union address.

We owe it to ourselves and to our policy makers to have a high standard of public debate about the future of our energy supplies.

Most decisions involving the way that Americans live their lives are not made in the courts.

Throughout U.S. history, competent public investments have been an essential complement to private investments - from the Louisiana Purchase, to land-grant colleges, to the Interstate Highway System, to the Internet.

The government has, in all countries, a vast influence, in determining the character of the national consumption; not only because it absolutely directs the consumption of the state itself, but because a great proportion of the consumption of individuals is gained by its will and example.

I think every program needs to stand the sunshine of righteous scrutiny. Whether it's Social Security, whether it's Medicaid, whether it's Medicare.

Over the past 100 years, there have been three major periods of tax-rate cuts in the U.S.: the Harding-Coolidge cuts of the mid-1920s; the Kennedy cuts of the mid-1960s; and the Reagan cuts of the early 1980s. Each of these periods of tax cuts was remarkably successful as measured by virtually any public policy metric.