There are two tests in life, more important than any other test. On Monday morning, when you wake up, do you feel in the pit of your stomach you can’t wait to go to work? And when you’re ready to go home Friday afternoon, do you say, ‘I can’t wait to go home?’
Chuck Schumer
Anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth, and there is only one way to see the world, always gets us into trouble.
Chuck Schumer
The dome of the U.S. Capitol has fallen into severe disrepair… As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which oversees matters of the Capitol’s physical plant, I have serious concerns about the consequences of omitting this funding from the stopgap spending measure.
Chuck Schumer
We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don’t get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it’s almost a temper tantrum.
Chuck Schumer
If we say the Geneva Convention is obsolete, then what do others who have our soldiers say?
Chuck Schumer
In a brave new world, a post-September 11 world, anyone is going to make certain mistakes. The mistakes that have been made on homeland security, on protecting our Nation from another terrorist attack, are mistakes of omission. We are simply not doing enough.
Chuck Schumer
Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do.
Chuck Schumer
What the public hates the most is when they think the politicians aren’t listening to them. They understand that we can’t solve all their problems with a snap of our fingers, but they sure want us to try because we are public servants.
Chuck Schumer
We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don’t starve. Those are values, too.
Chuck Schumer
Ideological warriors whether from the Left or the Right are bad news for the bench. They tend to make law, not interpret law. And that’s not what any of us should want from our judges.
Chuck Schumer
Democrats don’t relate to middle-class people.
Chuck Schumer
I’d like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.
Chuck Schumer
The bottom line is there are lots of problems that were not created by government. The biggest one is loss of middle class incomes, loss of good-paying jobs which was created by technology and globalization. Above all, when you can move a job to China or India, it reduces wages.
Chuck Schumer
My father, Abe, was a small businessman. For 32 years, he ran an exterminating company. That may explain why our family always associated the smell of roach spray with love.
Chuck Schumer
But I don’t think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.
Chuck Schumer
Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.
Chuck Schumer
You have to walk in the other guy’s moccasins. You have to think what they think. If you want to bring somebody onto your side, you have to figure out what motivates them. What do they need?
Chuck Schumer
I believe the war on terror is the vital discussion of this decade and of our generation, probably. To win the war on terror, you need a good offense and a good defense. On defense, I regret to say, basically, this administration has not come close to doing what is necessary.
Chuck Schumer
The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite – plutocrats like the Koch Brothers -want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants.
Chuck Schumer
I made education the highest priority of my campaign – actually education and jobs – and the reason is a simple one: I think the future of America depends on it.
Chuck Schumer
You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a President.
Chuck Schumer
When someone takes a private photo, on a private cell phone, it should remain just that: private.
Chuck Schumer
I respect people who feel things passionately. I do. But when someone is a judge, that is not what they should bring to the bench. It is not really passion, except in rare instances, that serves the bench well. It is, rather, an ability to understand the law and follow it.
Chuck Schumer
Voters did say ‘repeal health care’, they did say ‘reduce the size of government.’ But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said ‘give tax breaks to the wealthiest.’
Chuck Schumer
I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk.
Chuck Schumer
The Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of undisclosed dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government.
Chuck Schumer
The vast majority of the people employed by Wall Street are the secretary who goes in to work on the Long Island Rail Road, who makes fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year.
Chuck Schumer
Soft money will find its way and seep into the political system and corrode it, unless we plug every hole.
Chuck Schumer
Reclassification is the best way to for us to preserve the Internet as an unfettered tool for communication and the sharing of ideas.
Chuck Schumer
Do not let arguments of expediency persuade you. That is the slow road to oblivion. That is the tortured path to undoing step by step, bit by bit, as the river creates a canyon, the way of life that we love.
Chuck Schumer
We tend to talk, Democrats, as a party, in legislative terms.
Chuck Schumer
I went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me.
Chuck Schumer
America is a place where we all come together. It is a place of consensus.
Chuck Schumer
If we are going to stay a great power and I hope and pray we will we need the truth. We need to know what is going right and we need to know what is going wrong. There is no greater time than now.
Chuck Schumer
In today’s competitive economy, to stand still is to die.
Chuck Schumer
It is essential that all Americans take the time to honor and remember those individuals who gave their lives in defense of our liberty.
Chuck Schumer
When one has success, the answer is not to undo that success. It is to continue what has been done.
Chuck Schumer
Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, whether you are a liberal or a conservative, we know that neither this President nor prior Presidents of both parties did everything right or we would not have had a 9/11.
Chuck Schumer
A devastating commentary on the war in Iraq is that we have been unable to spend money on infrastructure.
Chuck Schumer
Arafat was a barrier to peace.
Chuck Schumer
You can set up whatever negotiations or structure you want, but until the Palestinians are willing to accept the fact, as the majority of Israelis do, that there should be two states between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, we won’t have peace.
Chuck Schumer
As long as the Palestinians send terrorists onto school buses and to nightclubs to blow up people, Israel has no choice but to build the fence.
Chuck Schumer
Well, I think it’s too early to call Fallujah a failure.
Chuck Schumer
You do have to change things as warfare changes.
Chuck Schumer
Well, the tough thing for them is that the Republican primary is pretty far over to the right, just as the Democratic primary is further over to the left than the average voter in each party.
Chuck Schumer
I want to attract the best people into teaching.
Chuck Schumer
But these days there are a lot of younger people who would like to go into teaching but don’t because the economic opportunities are sometimes elsewhere.
Chuck Schumer
I’m totally opposed to vouchers. I will fight them tooth and nail.
Chuck Schumer
So I want my kids to go to public schools because I think it’s a better education overall.
Chuck Schumer
I’m strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.
Chuck Schumer
I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession.
Chuck Schumer
Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments – the American people really don’t care.
Chuck Schumer