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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.

Barney Frank

Serving in Congress is like having a second shot at high school.
BARNEY FRANK

Congress Political School
The Moral Majority supports legislators who oppose abortions but also oppose child nutrition and day care. From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
BARNEY FRANK

Care Children Day Party
The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left’s on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.
BARNEY FRANK

Ambition Essentials Reality
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.
BARNEY FRANK

People Say Anything Thinking
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.
BARNEY FRANK

People Political Two
It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.
BARNEY FRANK

People Politician Use
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

Funny Graduation Grateful Swim
I should have voted for the first Iraq war. George Bush did that one very well. I had been skeptical. I was afraid that George Bush was going to treat the first Iraq war the way his son treated the second.
BARNEY FRANK

Afraid Country People Person Son War
In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms.
BARNEY FRANK

Country Democrats Staggered
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

Doctors Marijuana Medicine Practice
Disruption never helps your cause. … It just looks like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.
BARNEY FRANK

Causes Helping Looks
Going before an audience of people who expect you to be funny is tough. Going before an audience that expect you to be boring, and then being a little funny, is much easier. I prefer easier.
BARNEY FRANK

Littles People Tough
[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.
BARNEY FRANK

Government Roles Trying
People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
BARNEY FRANK

Entitled Innocence People Presumption
The public is ready now for a safety net for the middle class, something not just for the poor, but for everyone who will need help, from time to time, in order to own a home, educate their kids, keep themselves healthy or have something to retire on.
BARNEY FRANK

Home Kids Order
I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed – for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late ’50s, early ’60s – that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist.
BARNEY FRANK

Gay Reason Two

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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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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Popular Authors

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