If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don’t hold it back for retaliatory purposes.
BARNEY FRANKThese two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis.
More Barney Frank Quotes
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Ronald Reagan believes in the free market like some people believe in unicorns.
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Today, many people take for granted the notion that people whose lives are going to be very heavily affected by public policies should have a say in how they are formulated and carried out.
BARNEY FRANK -
They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who’s getting beaten up in school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn’t know how to promote homosexuality.
BARNEY FRANK -
When I was here there was still a requirement that students had to swim 50 yards to graduate…because Harry Elkins Widener had drowned with the sinking of the Titanic. And it made me very grateful at the time that he had not gone down in a plane crash.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
The fact that theyre a congressionally chartered group should no more incline people to give to that group than the fact that its National Pickle Month should make them eat more pickles.
BARNEY FRANK -
Excessive partisanship is the problem. There has never been a democracy in the history of the world in a polity of any size where you didn’t have political parties. Even sometimes over the objections of the people who started it.
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Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there’s no hierarchy.
BARNEY FRANK -
[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.
BARNEY FRANK -
Let us not say that we will decide on a political basis at the national level that no State is competent to regulate the practice of medicine in that State if they decide to allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana, because that is what we are talking about.
BARNEY FRANK -
Take free speech: most of the tough cases on free speech involve very unpleasant people saying very obnoxious things.
BARNEY FRANK -
Regarding homophobia in general, the good news is that there is a lot less of it than there used to be. The bad news is that it ever existed in the first place, and the worse news is that it remains far stronger than is healthy for a society dedicated in theory to equality under the law.
BARNEY FRANK -
These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis.
BARNEY FRANK -
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 -
If Bob Barr (conservative republican congressman from Georgia) caught on fire and I was holding a bucket of water, it would be great act of discipline to pour it on him. I would do it, but I’d hate myself in the morning.
BARNEY FRANK