Policy Issue Quotes

#1. A debate actually is a policy issue but I will say this - gosh, if you guys ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage.

Ted Cruz

#2. Freight mobility and movement, while not a sexy policy issue, is a highly important one. Capacity constraints and congestion on our nation's freight rail system create many problems.

Bill Lipinski

#3. Senator Biden was correct by calling for more to look into Governor Cuomo's defense policy. It is clear to me, by researching the governor's record on the issue, that he would be a wildcard on national defense issues.

Sam Nunn

#4. Ma Ying-jeou tends to use cross-strait policy as an election tool and a political tool, too, and my position is that we don't use that as a political tool because that is an issue that is critical and essential to the interests of the Taiwanese people.

Tsai Ing-wen

#5. I think the US has the right to have its own national security policy. I think most Americans would agree with that. And therefore clarity on this issue is important and especially if we commit ourselves, explicitly and bindingly, to Israel's security.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#6. And I've tried to give us a higher profile. Typically, at a board meeting, we'd pass resolutions about the civil-rights issue of the day, but we'd never tell anyone. So I've instituted a policy of announcing our resolutions at the end of our meetings.

Julian Bond

#7. Hillary [Clinton] has a really broad approach to engaging people around policy precisely because she understands that there are so many different dimensions to each issue.

Maya Harris

#8. Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy requires a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public agenda.

Eric Alterman

#9. Policy makers and business leaders take note: money matters. But often the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table - so that people can focus on the work rather than on the cash.

Daniel H. Pink

#10. I have observed in my 30 years in Washington that when a President initiates a major policy speech on a controversial issue while Congress is in recess, it usually is because what he is advocating is indefensible and that he is seeking to minimize criticism.

Dana Rohrabacher

#11. There are lots of other issues in policy including the stem cell issue.

David Baltimore

#12. Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else.

Henry A. Kissinger

#13. A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

Richard M. Nixon

#14. The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln.

Barack Obama

#15. Europe needs a clear and more collective and cohesive policy on security and energy supply. Today the issue of security of energy supply is only really considered at a national member-state level, but in reality we need a much greater European-wide approach on this issue.

Andris Piebalgs

#16. Many emerging countries are facing the same issue of overheating and inflation because they have been vigorously expanding fiscal and monetary policy to counter the 2008 shock.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati

#17. I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director.

Barack Obama

#18. Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism or homophobia or policy issues or taxes or urban decay or health care, you're not going to go anywhere with it if we don't focus on the concentration of power.

Ralph Nader

#19. You have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue. When there is divergence between your policy and the people's beliefs and interests, you will have this vacuum that creates disturbance.

Bashar Al-Assad

#20. Obama wanted to offer his support to birth control activist Sandra Fluke. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy.

Jay Carney

#21. For the past several years, the Meth Caucus has worked to engage the Office of National Drug Control Policy on this issue. We have tried to get their attention that meth requires a strong, comprehensive Federal policy.

Rick Larsen

#22. The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it's that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter.

Barney Frank

#23. My position on the POW issue has been widely misquoted and taken out of context. What I originally said and have continued to say is that the POW's are lying if they assert it was North Vietnamese policy to torture American Prisoners.

Jane Fonda

#24. Um, yeah. For instance, take, you know, take, for instance, the issue of -- I'm drawing a blank, and I hate it when I do that, particularly on television.
-- potential McCain VP candidate Mark Sanford, asked on CNN to name differences in economic policy between Bush and McCain

Mark Sanford

#25. I'm not a politician. I'm not a policy wonk. I was a political reporter, but that's not really what turns me on. What turns me on is how people perceive the issue and how people see people like me.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#26. Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted.

Malcolm Turnbull

#27. Part of the French political class is realising that there is are large number of Muslim people coming from the ghettos who want to make themselves heard, politically, especially about foreign policy issues. Its electoral weight can bring back to the forefront the Palestinian issue.

Tariq Ramadan

#28. Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination. While every president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning assassinations by U.S. personnel, Congress has avoided legislating the issue or even defining the word assassination.

Jeremy Scahill

#29. We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.

Tim Wirth

#30. The overarching issue, as I see it, is the elitism of America's political system; the fact that regular, ordinary Americans aren't considered in policy debates or legislation, and regularly get shafted by the powers-that-be in Washington.

Jerry Springer

#31. Everything in our foreign and domestic policy is a question of issue for the American people to vote on.

John Dingell

#32. There's the issue of hunger, and there's an issue of if you're going to cut out food programs. We should be focusing on healthy food. Right now, fruits and vegetables are very expensive. So what can we do on the policy side to bring the cost of fruits and vegetables down?

Tom Colicchio

#33. But it's a stigmatized problem, and it's a silent problem. This has to end. Suicide is not just a personal tragedy, it's a key issue of public policy and facing up to it requires political will.

Bob Rae

#34. The Administration should never have walked away from the Kyoto Treaty. Global warming is real and it is here today. The facts aren't the issue. The policy is the issue. I think the Administration's policy on global warming is dead wrong.

Ted Kulongoski

#35. What is at stake in the debate over health care is more than the mere crafting of policy. The issue is now the identity of the Democratic Party.

Thomas Frank