Top 50 Evan Bayh Quotes

I like a lot of my Republican colleagues, starting with my friend from Indiana, Senator Lugar. We’ve had an excellent relationship.

What we need to do is to come together as a people and solve the problems facing our country. And unfortunately, Washington is just not doing enough of that these days.

It doesn’t take a degree in economics to know that something is wrong when it takes $30 or $40 to fill up the gas tank.

To regain our political footing, we must prove to moderates that Democrats can make tough choices.

No one ever built the filibuster rule. It just kind of was created.

If one of my boys was asking me if they should go into politics, I’d say there’s only one reason to go into public life and that’s to help people.

There’s a high level of frustration with the two-party system out there.

Washington is totally out of touch with mainstream America.

I’m a former governor, and so I was the chief executive, and when the legislature wasn’t in session, I was running the state.

To win the war on terror, we must know who our friends are and where our enemies are hiding. We can’t continue fighting terrorism using the same foreign policy blueprints that were in place before September 11th.

I intend to continue to fight for the things I think are right for my country.

As Indiana’s governor, I balanced eight budgets, never raised taxes, and left the largest surplus in state history. It wasn’t always easy. Cuts had to be made and some initiatives deferred. Occasionally I had to say ‘no.’

Sometimes you have to make tough decisions to hold the line on spending.

If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.

People come into public life for different reasons. None of us are ego-challenged, I think, or we probably wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing, so if anyone tells you that they don’t like the sound of the applause and the ego gratification, I don’t think they’re being straight with you.

We must do all we can to help improve the deplorable human rights situation of the North Korean people.

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’

I’ve had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress.

If you are the executive, you’re probably going to have more of an impact than if you’re one of a hundred members of the Senate, certainly one of 435 members of the House.

My first meeting as a senator, my first day, they were already talking about the next election. Part of that’s the permanent campaign, part of that’s a word I’ve been using more frequently, ‘tribal.’ Our politics has become tribal: It’s us versus them.

I love my father, and I believe in him. And he lost to Dan Quayle. I had a hard time understanding how that could happen.

I’ve always cared about education, and I worked with Senator Schumer on making several thousand dollars of college tuition tax deductible. That will help a lot of your middle class families make college more affordable.

Families and businesses are tightening their belts to make ends meet – and Washington should too.

Our success as a party will largely be determined by how well we do here in the heartland… The time has come to be secure about our values. The time has come to lead.

I find the world just too complex to embrace a single ideological point of view.

Of course, the genesis of a good portion of the gridlock in Congress does not reside in Congress itself. Ultimate reform will require each of us, as voters and Americans, to take a long look in the mirror, because in many ways, our representatives in Washington reflect the people who have sent them there.

If, by demanding revolutionary change, I run the risk of accomplishing nothing on behalf of the public, then I’m not sure that’s a responsible course of action.

Filibusters should require 35 senators to… make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. The number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60.

I’m pleased to offer analysis of public policy and politics to the millions of Americans who get their news from Fox.

I love working for the people of Indiana. I love helping our citizens make the most of their lives, but I do not love Congress.

We need a foreign policy that is both tough… and smart. The good news? That is the historic legacy of the Democratic Party.

Sometimes making progress a step at a time is better than no progress at all.

The amount of U.S. debt held by countries such as China and Japan is at a historic high, with foreign investors holding half of America’s publicly held debt. This dependence raises the specter that other nations will be able to influence our policies in ways antithetical to American interests.

The fastest-growing part of the Pentagon‘s budget are health care expenses.

We should be proud of liberating the 26 million people in Iraq and should remember that this is why it is important to stick it out to it’s successful conclusion.

The United States must not allow North Korea to exacerbate tensions between our key strategic allies in Asia. As the leader of the free world, the United States needs to support our regional allies who are standing up to a Stalinist regime that is intent on developing nuclear weapons.

The only way Democrats can govern in this country is by making common cause with moderates and independents.

My mother wrote a book. Unfortunately, it ended up being published posthumously. But I’m glad she did, because it taught me a lot about my family that, otherwise, I probably wouldn’t know.

We shouldn’t have someone working in the Oval Office trying to discredit and smear a private individual who’s just speaking their mind about an important issue facing the country. That is not going to move our nation forward.

We all have things in life we’d do over again.

You wouldn’t run for the United States Senate or for governor or for anything else without answering people’s questions about what you believe. And I think the Supreme Court is no different.

Any time a president is re-elected, he has a little more political clout to get things done.

A few decades ago, the Irish decided they were tired of being always near the bottom of Europe‘s economic indicators. So they envisioned a better future for their country, and they put their people on the right road to get there.

Companies that are publicly held have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to try to maximize their profits within ethical reasons.

Across the country military families are facing dire financial circumstances due to longer than expected tours of duties. They are being penalized for their patriotism – no one should have to choose between doing right by their country and doing right by their families.

Massive debts owed to foreign creditors weaken our global influence and threaten high inflation and steep tax increases for our children and grandchildren.

You just hope that we haven‘t soured an entire generation on the necessity, from time to time, of using force because Iraq has been such a debacle. That would be tragic because Iran is a grave threat.

We know that a college degree is rapidly becoming the price of admission to the global economy.

We need leaders who appeal to us to think about something other than narrow self-interest but instead focus upon the greater good.

Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.