Barney Frank Quotes
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Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there's no hierarchy.
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People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
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While I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively high number of jobs created in April, the fact is that job creation during this recovery period has significantly lagged both historical experience in recovery, and the projections of the Bush Administration.
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It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.
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Well, many of us believe that excessive media concentration is a subject that ought to be addressed, and it is, of course, the intention of the majority party not to allow that to be discussed.
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I have been mislabeled as a big advocate of low-income home ownership over rental.
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They appear to have become so attached to their outrage that they are even more outraged that they won't be able to be outraged anymore.
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For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.
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Before this learning experience, I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty, the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons, and liberals who supported them.
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In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.
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There's a lot to be said for not displacing people.
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Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take.
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I'm antisocial - there's no question about it.
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Community action is as valuable a principle on the international level as it has been domestically.
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But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects - that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. - some of the previous supporters reconsidered.
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But on those occasions when I do strongly disagree with the Democrats and I don't say anything, I think I forfeit my right to have people pay attention to me when I say the things that I don't like about what Republicans are saying.
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Capitalism works better from every perspective when the economic decision makers are forced to share power with those who will be affected by those decisions.
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In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms.
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I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.
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I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.
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It wasn't until after I was reelected in 1982 that I thought of myself as a long-term member of Congress.
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This bill is the legislative equivalent of crack. It yields a short-term high but does long-term damage to the system and it's expensive to boot.
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I am not a great theologian. I know there is a theological concept called invincible ignorance in which a strong enough faith binds you to any facts to the contrary.
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What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history.