John Dingell Quotations

would force millions of Americans to reach into their wallets and pay a television tax of $20 to $60 per TV set.

We want to see to it that we still have medical decisions being made in favor of and on behalf of the patients, ... This is to see to it that the HMOs are treated the same as anybody else, not given preferential and reverential treatment. That's what the Norwood amendment does.

We have since heard nothing on this from Mr. Bush.

The plan is long on directions and short on resources for non-federal partners in pandemic preparedness.

Let's look at the system. First, the characteristics they're talking about they say is a fingerprint. In fact, it's more like a tire print.

Mr. Pitt got in trouble. If he is not doing the job, sees to it that security laws are properly enforced, it's time for him to depart.

Mr. Brown was regrettably an administrator, or an officer, or the head of an Arabian horse association. Hardly qualifying him to address the kind of problems he is looking at now.

If we're going to change the laws, let's change them in ways which makes it easier to catch criminals, and yet at the same time protect the Second Amendment rights of our law-abiding citizens.

I have great reservations about the whole idea. It is my view that cuts in Medicaid can be achieved by intelligent and sensible mechanisms.

I don't think it makes sense for the United States to take on the whole world on the question of whether or not we're going after Saddam Hussein.

He has not made even the slightest inquiry,

I will examine the details of this proposal to make sure it advances our goals of conserving fuel while preserving U.S. jobs and maintaining the safety of our cars and trucks.

People here are happy about her, and that includes me.

Will special sauce now be counted as a durable good?

We're working to fix this mischief. This cuts a big chunk of money. It hurts.

The president would prefer that all lawsuits involving negligent HMOs be handled in federal court, where injured patients would have to travel far from home and wait in a long line behind criminals and other miscreants to have their cases heard, ... This is wrong and we reject it.

We'll do what needs to be done with regard to getting a decent balanced budget, and take care of the other concerns of the people of this nation.

To go beyond this is to harass innocent law-abiding citizens and to hurt people who love to go to gun shows,

This startling new data shows that in seven of the ten industries studied, the wage gap between male and female managers widened between 1995 and 2000, ... It's compelling evidence that the glass ceiling remains a powerful obstacle to women in the workforce, and it suggests things may be getting worse, not better.

This staff draft is a very useful starting point in the process,

This rush to push through legislation of dubious virtue without any significant review is both unnecessary and unwise.

Why should ordinary people pay for a government decision that makes their television sets obsolete?

We must be careful to avoid any unintended consequences that may be hidden in the administration's proposal,

We will need to determine how to stop this kind of misbehavior in the future. We hope today's action is the first step by the board to operate in a more professional, nonpartisan manner.

We can offer (Bush) support for an intelligent policy, ... We can't offer him support for a policy ... that is unduly complicated.

We do not know whether Salt Lake City would have been selected as the site for the Games in the absence of the alleged improper activities,

FEMA has lost its way. FEMA has been submerged in a sea of bureaucracy,

These meetings should be brought to light so that we can tell how the public interest was served,

Prediction? The Democrats will win. I think it will be a close win, both for the House and for the Senate.

This is one of the major problems we have. By the way, it was endorsed by leadership on both sides of the aisle and both ends of the Capitol, by the NRA and also by the gun control groups.

This bill does nothing except to help the insurance companies and the well-to-do and the healthy.

It's a piece of legislation that can best and most kindly be described as a fraud upon a group of people who had high hopes that their Congress will take care of them.

I trust them, but I'm watching them very closely,

For hundreds of thousands of families, Medicaid is going to be a lifeline in the coming months,

That's right; millions of your hard-earned tax dollars would go to the same companies reaping the benefit of US$3 a gallon of gas and US$60 a barrel of oil,

That's the equivalent of one Big Mac or one Happy Meal a month. That's a small price to pay to ensure that you have fundamental rights regarding your health care,

They are viewed as useful, necessary and good.

I'm very close to suggesting that Mr. Pitt has now served as long as he can usefully do so. He seems to take his foot out of his mouth only for purposes of changing feet.

In short, you will have the rights and protections that have too long been denied by HMOs,

I'll look and pick the best, and the one who can do the best job for the party.

This is a gross and deliberate misrepresentation of the fact,

...the hardest hammer can only strike the nail squarely when guided by the softer hand; in other words, the pursuit of truth was most effective when tempered with fairness...

You've got an emergency. Let's address the emergency. Let's go to the other things that are more difficult later.

The draft before us undermines long-standing objectives of fostering localism, competition and diversity. Rushing this one-sided draft forward will set back our long-term goals of accelerating broadband deployment and video competition.

There is a tendency of the American people to give those who are elected an opportunity to carry out their policies and programs.

The DOE and DOD are among the most notorious offenders of our hazardous waste laws.

If you talk to any of my Democratic colleagues who lost that year, they would tell that gun control was one of the major contributory factors in the loss of their seats.

I still think it would be a great mistake to go into a war without support of our friends and allies.

I think we will begin to see some real efforts made to do things like protecting Social Security and Medicare.

I have worked with Presidents since Eisenhower. We serve together.

I have enormous respect for Tom Daschle. The NRA has not yet taken a formal position on which I'm aware of on this matter, and I think Tom may be just getting a little ahead of things.

Everything in our foreign and domestic policy is a question of issue for the American people to vote on.

I can support going in after Saddam Hussein, but I want to make sure I don't go alone.

Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and it's a great big one.

If the president is failing to disclose material facts with regard to legislation being presented to the Congress on a question as important as war and peace, I think it does impair the level of trust that the House and the Senate have for this administration.

If we're going to spend a lot of money to deal with the problem of 200 million guns in the country owned by 65 million gun owners, we ought to have a system which will work and catch criminals.

Compromise is an honorable word.

The Congress has now become a fairly evenly divided entity.

Living wild species are like a library of books still unread. Our heedless destruction of them is akin to burning the library without ever having read its books.

I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah, or for or against Israel.

My old daddy used to say "kill the closest snake first".

The Democratic Party is a house of many mansions. It is a body which is extremely important in representing all kinds of people in all parts of the country who have very broad and very different views.

Mr. Dingell is just plain Mr. Dingell. And when he gets to be chairman of the Commerce Committee, he doesn't let it go to his head. However, he thinks he would be a very, very good chairman.

War is failure of diplomacy.

To go to war, you must always think of, can you win?

The mistake that was made was, of course, leaving Saddam in charge of affairs over there.

The Democratic Party needs to look carefully at moving towards the middle, where the American people are.

I'm Polish, I carry no grudges.

If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick BATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms].

If were going to change the laws, lets change them in ways which makes it easier to catch criminals, and yet at the same time protect the Second Amendment rights of our law-abiding citizens.

The harsh fact of the matter is when you're passing legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways, it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.