Charles Schumer quotes:

Candidates With Deeply Held Christian Beliefs Are Unfit and Disqualified From Serving As A Federal Judge.

When Mitt Romney says he wants to reform the tax code, hold on to your wallets. We know Mitt Romney never met a tax haven he didn't like. But his new favorite tax haven is actually not the Cayman Islands - its Paul Ryan's budget.

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.

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.

If we say the Geneva Convention is obsolete, then what do others who have our soldiers say?

I'd like to see the health care professionals making decisions, not some bureaucrat in Indianapolis working for an insurance company.

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.

Biking through New York's boroughs in 2005, I thought about some old friends, Joe and Eileen Bailey. Though they are imaginary, I frequently talk to them.

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.

I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.

But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.

Barack Obama knows that to create an economy built to last, we need to focus on middle-class families. Families who stay up on Sunday nights pacing the floor, like my dad did, while their children, tucked in bed, dream big dreams. Families who aren't sure what Monday morning will bring, but who believe our nation's best days are still ahead.

If you talk privately to our tech companies, our pharmaceutical companies, our high-end manufacturing companies, the high end of America, where the good-paying jobs are, China is not letting them in unless China gets to steal their intellectual property in a company that`s 51 percent owned by the Chinese.

The companies move labor to the lowest-cost markets. And so I don`t - I used to support these agreements. In the Congress, I lost the AFL-CIO endorsement a few years because I supported them. But when middle class incomes are declining, these agreements don`t work well for America.

Democratic Rep. Charles Schumer of New York made a plea to Livingston, the incoming speaker. These new hearings, these new subpoenas wave a red flag that common sense and common wisdom are not welcome here, .. Mr. Livingston, this may be the first and most important task you will ever face as speaker. Lead us out of this abyss.

Substantively Democrats are much closer to where the American people are than Republicans are.

Arafat was a barrier to peace.

I basically believe that until China stop stealing our intellectual property, and until they stop keeping our companies out that do good things, the amount we will gain from export jobs is minimized, and the amount we lose in middle class incomes is maximized.

Anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth, and there is only one way to see the world, always gets us into trouble.

I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession.

Democrats don't relate to middle-class people.

The bottom line is very simple. You negotiate on this, they will up the ante for the debt ceiling.

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.

I'm totally opposed to vouchers. I will fight them tooth and nail.

All we ask for is registration, just like we do for cars.

When one has success, the answer is not to undo that success. It is to continue what has been done.

Palestinians don't really believe in a state of Israel. They, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a two-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there.

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.

We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!

The thing I'd want people to say about me is that, in some way, I helped bring the Senate and the Congress back to what it used to be, the people's branch of government, doing things that made a difference in people's lives. I have devoted my life to government.

Jewish voters care. They want someone who's good on Israel and who's good on Jewish issues. But they also want somebody who's going to be pro-choice and pro-gun control and pro-gay rights. To the vast majority of the Jewish community, just being good on Israel or on Jewish issues is not enough.

You know, my name .... comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem [Orthodox for God] actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer -- to be a or the shomer Yisrael. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body ...

We're here to tell the NRA their nightmare is true...

Crime can be a unifying argument - not an argument that people use as a code for us vs. them.

I am deeply skeptical of trade deals in general.But the only way they can get a number of Democrats is by doing a strong real currency bill that goes after the worst of the trading partners, the one that`s stealing our high-end jobs.

[Barack] Obama administration, the [George W.]Bush administration have done nothing. And as China has manipulated its currency, we`ve lost trillions of dollars of wealth and millions of good-paying jobs.

I'm still basically an idealist, which translates into getting real things done to make people's lives better.

A devastating commentary on the war in Iraq is that we have been unable to spend money on infrastructure.

I feel very strongly that we need to change the way we do trade because it has been one of the major factors that lead to decline of middle class incomes.

If the Saudis were culpable, they should be held accountable. If they had nothing to do with 9/11, they have nothing to fear.

Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do.

Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

...the only people who use them [so-called assault weapons] are mass murderers...

When I started to get involved in the crime issue, people said, "it's a local issue." I said, "No, there are lots of ways the federal government can help." And the best way the federal government can help, and did in the Crime Bill, is to find programs that work around the country and help them spread.

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?'

When the President starts talking about something, it makes a difference.

If other cows with mad cow disease were slaughtered, we wouldn't know where to begin looking for people who might have been affected, .. With a comprehensive tracking system, we would.

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.

There are many reasons why Mitt Romney should not become president, but perhaps the most important of all is the narrowness of his experience, perspective and vision.

People are angry and dispirited about government because of a failure to do something about crime.

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.

Soft money will find its way and seep into the political system and corrode it, unless we plug every hole.

When Mitt Romney says he wants to reform the tax code, hold onto your wallets.

This is government's primary function - to keep us safe - and when large percentages in America don't feel safe, they start asking: What am I paying my taxes for? What is government all about?

We tend to talk, Democrats, as a party, in legislative terms.

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.

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.

The NRA is weakening but the opposing forces are stronger. A member of Congress has and still does pay a price for voting against the NRA. But now a member pays a price for voting with the NRA, too. In many districts, the price is higher when a member votes with the NRA than against the NRA. The public is outraged.

Republicans always try to paint Democrats as weak on defense. This time, they can't. After all, Mitt Romney's idea of an overseas accomplishment is sending U.S. jobs there.

I want to attract the best people into teaching.

So I want my kids to go to public schools because I think it's a better education overall.

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.

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.

The Democratic Party was always there on crime, but in the past we let the ideologues on the left dominate. The Republicans may still let the ideologues on the right dominate.

America is a place where we all come together. It is a place of consensus.

When someone takes a private photo, on a private cell phone, it should remain just that: private.

I think, the left makes a mistake. If you look particularly at the state levels, violent repeat criminals are not punished enough. The average murderer is sentenced to 17 1/2 years but serves six. The average rapist is sentenced to 10 years but serves about three and a half. The average mugger is sentenced to five years and serves little more than one.

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.

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.

I don't think we should be putting first-time drug offenders in jail for five years. It's a waste of resources.

This bill [Immigration Reform and Control act of 1986] is a gamble, a riverboat gamble. There is no guarantee that employer sanctions will work or that amnesty will work. We are headed into uncharted waters.

Our borders are much too porous...We want to keep them open, but we also have to be much more careful. ...Right now, if you get on an airplane [to the U.S.] and claim asylum...when you arrive at Kennedy Airport in New York, they will say to you, 'OK, we'll give you a hearing on whether you deserve asylum. Show up in a year.' And two-thirds of the people never show up.

Unfortunately, the administration's plan is an ounce of cure for a pound of problems.

I support the death penalty for the kingpin, the guy at the top, but I don't think you should throw a drug offender in jail for five years, and let a mugger out after a year.

I went to the public schools myself. And they were great for me.

No one believed [the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens] was tough enough on illegal immigration, and it didn't give enough flexibility on future legal immigration.

We've come to a basic agreement, which is that first, people will be legalized. In other words, not citizens, but they'll be allowed to work, come out of the shadows, travel. Then, we will make sure the border is secure. And we have specific metrics that are in the bill. I'm not going to get into what they are...

What I want to do first with education is my student loan idea. Basically, if you go into teaching and teach for five years, your student loans should be forgiven. It doesn't cost that much.

Bigotry has always been the poison of America, and we oughta do everything to eradicate it with no excuses or explanations.

I am not saying I will vote against John Ashcroft because he is pro-life, .. But let me say if someone was nominated for attorney general who was vehemently pro choice -- who in his or her career spent decades trying to find ways to expand the law abortion at nine months would be perfectly legal -- wouldn't you be more upset and raise more of a voice than against a nominee who was simply pro-choice?.

Obviously, there are conservatives who are in the mainstream and conservatives who would take people's rights away.

I think on this issue more than any other we're going to see sort of a bipartisan longing to get something done, and hopefully you're not going to find the fisticuffs that you would find on lots of other issues. I think you'll be able to glean a sense of progress without us revealing the specifics.

You do have to change things as warfare changes.

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.

Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure.

In education, I'm going to try to find what works. One thing I want to do is improve the quality of teachers. There are a lot of people who want to go into teaching; it's fundamentally a very fulfilling profession. But people don't feel they have financial support. We pay starting teachers in particular too little to attract the quality people that we need. I want to make it easier for good people who want to go into teaching to do that.

I'm not sure we will have every single Democrat ... but we want a large number of Republicans to be able to vote for this bill because we think that will encourage the House not only to move forward but to pass a bill.

I think we could be at a tipping point

The highest priority you can have is education.

It is essential that all Americans take the time to honor and remember those individuals who gave their lives in defense of our liberty.

In today's competitive economy, to stand still is to die.

My car was broken into four times before it was stolen. That can drive you nuts - the repetition. I'd wake up every morning and put on my jeans over my pajamas to run down and see if my car was still on the street. That's not a pleasant way to live.

Certainly any president - Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative - should keep an open mind until they get the briefing.

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.

The greatest problem America faces is the decline of middle class incomes.

When you lose an election, you don't blink, you don't turn away. You look it right in the eye and say, why did we lose?

The currency bill we have would finally do something for China`s rapacious policies.

The export market is based, on high-paying jobs. I`ve seen statistics that show that people make over 88 a year generally benefit from this because these are export jobs.

If you have a sharp bold economic message, you can unite everybody.

I'm going to focus on people and what they need, not on name calling between politicians.

We can't have a Twitter president. This is serious stuff, this governing.

An economic message, an economic platform unites the factory worker in Scranton, the young woman in Los Angeles struggling to pay her college debt and the single mom in Buffalo who's on minimum wage.

I think Donald Trump is trying to use populist rhetoric to cover up a right-wing agenda.

Our job is going to be to hold Donald Trump and the Republican majority accountable.

President Trump ought to realize, he's not campaigning anymore. He's president. And instead of talking about how many people showed up at his inauguration, he ought to be talking about how many people are going to stay into the middle class and move into the middle class.

What we are going to do as Democrats is put together a really strong platform that focuses on jobs and economic issues.

When you run for president you have certain obligations. One of them would be to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest.

I think there's going to be a lot of Americans who are really willing to be much more active than they were before, because they're worried about where Trump is headed.

The public knows how many good things there are as part of the Affordable Care Act. The Republicans say they're going to repeal. They don't know what to replace it with.

We repeal sanctions, it tells Russia, go ahead and interfere in our elections and do bad things; it tells China, it tells Iran. That would be terrible.