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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

There was a degree of interventionism in American foreign policy, the notion that we must be the superpower and we have to intervene everywhere, that I think makes no sense.
BARNEY FRANK

Degree Foreign Policy Thinking
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
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.
BARNEY FRANK

Effort People Programs Welfare
In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms.
BARNEY FRANK

Country Democrats Staggered
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
The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.
BARNEY FRANK

Gay Rights Writing
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.
BARNEY FRANK

Jobs Numbers Recovery
When community action was put into federal law in the early sixties as part of the effort to combat poverty and social injustice, I supported it intellectually.
BARNEY FRANK

Community Effort Law
Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
BARNEY FRANK

Believe Birth Government
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

Issues Moral Spheres
Disruption never helps your cause. … It just looks like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.
BARNEY FRANK

Causes Helping Looks
The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.
BARNEY FRANK

Country Stupidity War
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
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 FRANK

People Serious Thinking Violation
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

Fire Hate Morning

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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