Famous quotes by Public Servants

"In 1965, I marched for equality"

"We can't have - we can't have a patchwork of 50 states developing their own immigration policy. I understand the frustration of people in Arizona. They want the federal government to step up and deal with this problem once and for all, and that's what we want to do"

"The fact is if we do our job right, if we keep worrying not about polls but about the jobs of the American people, about their health care, about their ability to educate their kids, stay in their homes and own their homes, send their kids to college, the basic pillars of a middle-class life, if we keep worrying about the future and building a stronger future for this country, these things will take care of themselves"

"We don't want to go back to the same policies and the same practices that drove our economy into a ditch, that punished the middle class, and that led us to this catastrophe. We have to keep moving forward"

"If you look at the themes that he struck from the minute he started running for president through today, there is a very high level of consistency, and there is a sense that he is who he is. Obama's governing is completely consistent with the way he campaigned and the themes on which he campaigned, the issues he highlighted, the vision he shared"

"I came to the conclusion months ago, and I said it to members of Congress, that the only way people are going to fully appreciate what this reform is if we pass it and implement it and it becomes not a caricature but a reality, and I still believe that. So I think it will be easier to sell it moving forward than it was to this point"

"The economy is too weak right now. We need to jump-start it. The American Jobs Act will provide that jump-start, to help us into next year and the year after that"

"I think what should be celebrated about our campaign is we have over 3 million people who have contributed to our campaign - teachers, firefighters, nurses, retirees. They're making up the backbone of this field organization in the country"

"My point is cutting spending shouldn't be reliant on the debt limit though. It's something we have to do. The good news for America is, leaders in both parties, the president, believe that we have to have significant deficit reduction. So the intent is there. And I think what America is going to demand is that our leaders come together"

"Nobody leaves a hotel without getting a full measure of three months of rental assistance. So no one has been evicted - no one who's eligible has been evicted from a hotel without getting a significant amount of money to find - to pay for their rent"

"What we've tried to do is have neighbors, colleagues, friends and family talking"

"It's really a question of fairness and what kind of country we're going to live in. There are 22,000 people making over $1 million. They're paying an effective tax rate in the teens. As Warren Buffett said, he pays less in taxes effectively than his secretary does. That's not right"

"This is a basic function of Congress to keep the government running. And so, what we ought not to do is play politics with those who have been affected by disasters"

"The American people know the economy is too weak. Too many of them are suffering. So the question for Washington is, are we going to continue to play political games and - and - or are we going to say, we can do something right now to create jobs, to put money in the pockets of the middle-class, hire construction workers, teachers, veterans?"

"But the debt limit obviously is something that needs to and will be passed. That is not inconsistent with a process and a belief that we have to get significant deficit reduction"

"Second, there are two problems with respect to mobile homes in particular. One is we obviously don't want to put them in a flood plain, because if there's another flood, you're going to lose the mobile home"

"But I think the bottom line right now is to take the constructive criticism and use that to build toward, as I say, the hurricane season that is 100 days away. And we don't have a lot of time to waste before we start to address that next set of challenges"

"We've done it in intelligence sharing and certain elements of security. There were parts of the department, in fact, that worked very well in Katrina, like the Coast Guard and TSA"

"We may have to force people to get together in terms of picking a particular type of technology and starting to build to that technology, as opposed to everybody exercising their right to buy their own system, you know, at will"

"We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina, from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack"

"The second thing we did was said, OK, we've now identified the risk, but what do you want to do with the money? Because it's not enough to have risk; you've got to have a meaningful use for the money we give you"

"And one of the things I want to say, Wolf, is we're 100 days from hurricane season, and we've got to start focusing on what we're going to do to make ourselves ready for the next hurricane"

"Well, I'm not excusing the fact that planning and preparedness was not where it should be. We've known for 20 years about this hurricane, this possibility of this kind of hurricane"

"Well, I think first of all there was a failure to have real, clear information at our disposal. There was a real lack of situational awareness. We didn't have the capabilities on the ground to give us real-time, accurate assessments of the physical condition of the city"

"So, all during the '90s and, you know, for the first half of this decade, we had opportunities to get evacuation plans in place, better communications in place"

"Last year, New York got $200 million. This year, we're going to give them $124 million under this particular program. But last year was an artificially elevated number to make up from the very low grant the year before"

"First, we did rank everybody by risk, and New York comes out number one"

"And if we make the process political, if we start to make it personal, we're actually going to frustrate good public policy, in terms of managing this money"

"And here where the fact that we've given over half a billion dollars to New York really plays a role, because New York has already made a lot of investments in the kinds of things which you'd expect to have as basic security"

"So that's why I said, if you look at the average, you would see the money New York got this year was in line with the average across the prior three years and substantially more, by a country mile, than the money given to any other city"