Quote/Unquote
June 27"The law gets a bad rap. Congress, in fact, gets a bad rap. Much of what is bureaucratic red tape that causes inefficiency are self-inflicted wounds that the government has done to itself over the years."
June 26
"This plan says that enough is enough, that the era of an inept HUD must end."
--HUD's 2020 Management Reform Plan, on the agency's designation as the "poster child for inept government."
June 25
"I don't think the government is capable of putting together a decent conspiracy. We have a hard time keeping a secret, let alone putting together a decent conspiracy."
--Retired Air Force Col. Richard Weaver, author of a report debunking the notion that the government is covering up evidence of the landing of an alien spacecraft in Roswell, N.M. 50 years ago.
June 24
"I learned a couple of months ago where the definition of the word politics comes from. . . . It comes from 'poly,' the Greek word meaning many, and 'ticks,' meaning small blood-sucking insects."
--Joseph Romm, acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, at Johnson Controls' Energy Efficiency Forum last week.
June 23
"I for one am not going to be in an airplane on New Year's Eve in 1999."
--Attorney Cathleen Judge on the effects of the Year 2000 problem on computers, including navigation systems.
June 20
"Does anybody really believe that God is going to comply with the provisions of the Budget Act? ... I haven't chatted with him lately, but I don't think that's going to occur."
--House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., contending during a House Appropriations Committee markup Wednesday that the fifth year of the balanced budget deal calls for large cuts in FEMA and flood control funding.
June 19
"The United States is a country that remembers our killed and our wounded in terrorist attacks. We are not a country that forgives. We seek retribution."
--State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns on the apprehension of a suspect in the 1993 killing of two CIA employees outside the agency's headquarters.
June 18
"To paraphrase one of my mother's maxims: the committee's haste will make waste."
--John Sturdivant, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, on the union's concerns about the Defense Reform Act.
June 17
"The purpose is to take the blinders off these agencies and get them focused on results."
--Carl DeMaio of the Congressional Institute on the Government Performance and Results Act.
June 16
"We can argue--we should argue--about the proper boundary lines of the public sector. ... But we will not be able to do without people--first-rate people, people imbued with a sense of mission, willing and able to devote a good share of their life to public service."
--Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, in a speech to the American Society for Public Administration last week.
June 13
"In the first decade of the century, Washington finally begins to really reinvent government . . . The hierarchical bureaucracies of the 20th century are flattened and networked through the widespread adoption of new technologies."
--Peter Schwartz and Peter Layden on the future of government in the July issue of Wired magazine.
June 12
"It looks like another government shutdown all over again."
--An unnamed House Republican, quoted by CongressDaily, arguing that the GOP has lost the public relations battle with the White House over President Clinton's veto of disaster relief legislation.
June 11
"This won't put a dent in closing a welfare job gap of some two million jobs; only an active policy that promotes private-sector job creation, training and placement will make the difference."
--Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Rep. Amo Houghton, R-N.Y., in a Washington Times op-ed piece, on the federal government's effort to hire 10,000 people off the welfare rolls.
June 10
"Nowadays managers are the only group it's politically correct to make fun of."
--National Performance Review Director Bob Stone.
June 9
"It would do them good to pick up their phones. They certainly called us when the last shutdown happened."
--A spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who urged federal employees to call on President Clinton to support a government shutdown prevention measure.
June 6
"This is not about the Clinton administration. These are inherent flaws in the IRS. We're taking this dramatic step because of a historical problem of the Treasury not giving the IRS enough attention."
--Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, on the logic behind restructuring the IRS.
June 5
"[Republicans] are shutting down the Senate the same way they shut down the government."
--Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., after the Senate voted to adjourn Wednesday rather than spend all night debating a controversial supplemental spending bill.
June 4
"I've stopped bashing [Washington]. I'd give speeches, and I'd try to find out how low you can go in criticizing government. And I found there is no bottom. There is no line that won't get a laugh. And I decided I was just fouling my own nest."
--Former Education Secretary and drug czar William Bennett.
June 3
"I felt there were 168 smiles from above."
--Dan McKinney, whose wife, Secret Service Agent Linda McKinney, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, quoted by the Associated Press on the guilty verdict brought against Timothy McVeigh.
June 2
"As a federal employee, I have a good health insurance policy. I pay 20 percent copayment. It would be terrible to have this happen to you without any health insurance."
--President Clinton, on his recent injury, in People magazine.
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