Quotes About Reform

I'm not optimistic about reform in many, if any, policy areas at all. I think we'll make further progress by inventing new things that aren't much regulated yet and outracing bad policy. I look at so many policy areas - regulation, regulatory reform, health care reform - it's all failing, we're not making improvements, we're going backwards.

I have stood on the front lines of the health care system as a doctor, patient and concerned parent. Those experiences have served as my guideposts throughout the struggle to reform America's health care system. And it's those same experiences that tell me that fear and election hysteria should not overshadow the reality of reform.

Democrats' desperate attempt to focus on campaign finance reform instead of laws that may have been broken by the Clinton-Gore campaign is like Mike Tyson demanding a reform in boxing regulations after biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear.

I believe we need affordable child care. I believe we need flexibility. I believe we need institutional reform and public policy reform.

Those who advocate either slavery or income taxation should be ashamed of themselves. Genuine freedom entails the abolition, not the reform, of income taxation and the IRS, just as genuine freedom entailed the abolition, not the reform, of slavery.

My administration's policies on regulatory reform, tax reform, trade policies, will return significant manufacturing jobs to our country.

They'll [China] probably be a fully developed nation. The road there just is not going to be that easy. You're going from a macromanaged, top-down economy to a market-managed, micromanaged type of economy, with all the potential corruption issues, SOE [state-owned enterprise] reform, and market reform that come with it.

Reform immigration to make it easy for individuals to come over here, be documented, pay taxes - immigration reform is needed to state that its about work, its not about welfare... Set up a grace period where they can get a work permit... social security card so that they can pay income tax, social security, Medicare.

The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them 'till last.

To attempt social reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of the race without aiming, first and foremost, at political freedom is the very height of ignorance and futility.

I want to reform the tax code so that it's simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 - the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

Religion must be used in furthering great works of justice and reform. It must be used to establish right relations between different groups of men, and thus to make a reality of brotherhood. It must be used to abolish poverty, the breeding ground of all misery and crime, by distributing equably among men the abundance of the soil. And it must be used to get rid of war and to establish enduring peace. Here is the supreme test of the effectiveness of religion.

I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation's security, and to restore respect for our laws.

If we don't reform how healthcare is delivered in this country, then we are not going to be able to get a handle on that escalating healthcare costs.

There are three major political organizations in this country: the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the Koch Brothers Party. With billions to spend on campaigns. think tanks and 'educational' organizations, the Koch brothers are the most powerful. We must overturn Citizens United, move to public funding of elections and pass real tax reform.

Managing the other fellow's business is a fascinating game. Trade unionists all over the country have pronounced ideas for the reform of Wall Street banks; and Wall Street bankers are not far behind in giving plans for the tremendous improvement of trade union policies. Wholesalers have schemes for improving the retailer; the retailer knows just what is wrong in the conduct of wholesale business-and we might go through a long list.... Yet for some reason the classes that ought to be helped keep on stubbornly clinging to their own method of running their affairs.

I think the Ronald Reagan tax reform proposals are a step toward distributive justice. They redistribute the tax burden more equitably and more progressively among individuals and call upon business to carry a somewhat larger proportion of the total tax load. Both of these are steps toward equity and distributive justice.

The budget caps were busted, mightily so. And we are reviewing with people like Judd Gregg from New Hampshire and others some budgetary reform measures that will reinstate - you know, possibly reinstate budgetary discipline. But the caps no longer - the caps, I guess they're there. But they didn't mean much.

In our view, successful reform is not an event. It is a sustainable process that will build on its own successes - a virtuous cycle of change.

One thing I have frankly decided is that when it comes to political reform we have two conservative parties in British politics. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have constantly and repeatedly failed to honour promises they have made about reforming, cleaning, modernising our clapped-out system.

Trade reform has also been linked to increased income disparity as skilled workers have captured more benefits from globalization than their unskilled counterparts.

The exposé, the compassion and outrage, of documentary fueled by the dedication to reform has shaded over into combinations of exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism and metaphysics, trophy hunting - and careerism.

Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.

If we're able to stop Obama on [health care reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him and we will show that we can, along with the American people, begin to push those freedom solutions that work in every area of our society.

So, very early reports are that Obamacare exchanges are, as expected, having some technical glitches on the first day - maybe even a bit worse than expected, because it appears that volume has been much bigger than predicted. Here’s what you need to know: this is good, not bad, news for the program... Lots of people logging on and signing up on the very first day... is an early indication that it’s going to be fine, that plenty of people will sign up for the first year of health reform.

If, in fact, the GOP doesn't like any form of health care reform, what do we do with those 40 to 60 million uninsured?...When they show up in the emergency room, just shoot 'em! Kill them!...Do we have enough body bags? I don't know.

Some often repent, yet never reform; they resemble a man traveling in a dangerous path, who frequently starts and stops, but never turns back.

Take Hispanic voters. They favor Democrats because they like the party's programs, from health care reform to government spending on education. It's not because the Republicans don't have a big enough Office of Hispanic Outreach.

In reality, we've had more spending, more bureaucracy, more waste and higher costs but without necessary reform nor rising productivity.

The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people's night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

Social Security's future has gotten worse, and each year we delay reform adds to the cost we are pushing off onto our children.

Principle #6: Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress.

There was a whole group that really welcomed me: George Mitchell was one, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, the reformers were really delighted to see me. So if you were one of those squeaky clean, shiny bright, let's reform the world, you were very glad to see Barb Mikulski, and George Mitchell was in that category.

Don't attempt to reform man. An adequately organized environment will permit humanity's original, innate capabilities to become successful.

The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available,with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation in the United States.

For our welfare reform efforts to be successful, we must empower local charitable organizations with the resources to address their local community needs.

The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification.

I don't like the term "universal bank." The Chinese government legitimately wants to have a very strong economy. When they talk about SOE reform, they know that's part of it.

I certainly want campaign finance reform. I just wish this would do it in a way that would stand up to a constitutional challenge.

The World Trade Organization, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions virtually write economic policy and parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies and devastate them, all under the fluttering banner of 'reform'.

If you're in favour of any policy - reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever - if you're at least minimally moral, it's because you think it's somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

Well, Luce, my dear, you may have gone to boarding school parties, but you've never seen a throw-down like reform school kids do it.

Revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government.

The "third arrow" (of structural reform) is critically important. Japan has some of the best companies in the world, and if you look at their technology, their capability, it's extraordinary.

The government is determined to continue the process of fiscal consolidation and structural reform in order to secure sound public finances and improve the country's international competitiveness.

I've developed several serious policy proposals to create jobs, reform Washington and reduce spending.

To the contrary, I think we bent over backwards to press for elections and for democratic reform.