America is a great country. We are so wealthy. But our one remaining challenge is to fulfill the potential of all our people. And the only way we can do that is to try to bring everybody together to a higher place.
— Dick Gephardt
The people I'm honored to represent in Missouri and all over the country want leaders to address their kitchen table everyday problems.
I've always believed as a value that the government has a vital - not overwhelming, but vital - role to play in furthering human welfare and good. I think we have an important supportive role to play, hopefully intelligent and sensible.
Tom Daschle and I worked together on Families First every step of the way, making sure that Democrats in both the House and Senate were involved in putting the agenda together.
My healthcare plan puts more money into average families' pockets than the Bush tax cuts... He's got a lousy tax cut. It's only good for the super wealthy. I've got a tax cut that will help ordinary people.
I've always had good energy; I've always had good health.
I grew up in a household that was a labor household. My dad was a Teamster and a milk truck driver. My mother was a secretary. Neither of them got through high school. But they worked hard and they gave me very, very important opportunities to go to school, get a good education.
Eventually I foresee voting on the Internet, which will lead to much more direct democracy.
Life is the division of human cells, a process which begins at conception.
You know, when you're in public life, everything you do is out there. But I am proud to stand on my record.
I think in some cases busing did improve the situation in some areas; in some cases it didn't. We had busing in St. Louis, and it has been ended and we are using other methods of trying to better integrate the schools.
I've thought a lot about the world and how George Bush sees the world and it ain't even close.
Why would we want to keep a tax cut that's failed? Why would we not want to go back to the Clinton tax code? And why would we not want to help every family more with a health-care plan like mine? Let's help average people. Let's be Democrats.
I had the honor to meet Nelson Mandela, and I heard him explain his forgiveness of his captors of 27 years by saying hatred and bitterness is destructive - the power is in love and forgiveness.
My parents wanted me to be a Baptist minister. I was a youth minister in my church when I was still in college. And I was in a lot of theater in high school, and at Northwestern.
I don't think you can be a good listener unless you're a good listener. I think it's something that you really have to do, and if you really do it, then you can do it. If you don't do it, then you can't do it.
Unlike the Contract with America, which was created by Washington pollsters and insiders, Families First was developed from the grassroots up. Congressional Democrats from across the country spent months meeting with people back home, asking them what issues were important to them, and what Congress could do to make their lives a little easier.
Democracy is interactive... It's a constant job of information, education, explanation, listening, and interactive communication.
In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn't have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out.
I think it's time we had a president who carried the same life experiences into the White House as most ordinary Americans.
The sanctity of a woman's right to control her own destiny is a moral force of its own... I came to realize that the question of choice is to be answered, not by the state, but by the individual.
In 1993, as House Democratic Leader, I led the fight to pass the Clinton-Gore economic plan - a plan designed to slash the deficit, invest in education, cut taxes for working families, and ask the wealthy among us to pay their fair share... Not one Republican voted for that plan. They said it was a job killer.
I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.
I'm running for president because I've had enough of the oil barons, the status-quo apologists, the special-interest lobbyists running amok.
I hope we can get back to what I call the kitchen table. Everyday issues that people are really worried about and focused on.
Like father, like son, four years and this president is done.
Al Gore is a good man. He is a decent, caring man. He listens to his heart and his head. He loves his family.
I think a lot of people think I was born in a blue suit, on the David Brinkley show. And that isn't me. I am much more that kid who grew up in South St. Louis, in a very modest household, with a simple background with parents who didn't get through high school.
The deficit only became a big problem in the Reagan-Bush years. For 12 years, Republican presidents talked about balancing the budget, but failed to propose one.
One of the big mistakes Republicans made with the Contract with America is that they tried to do too much too fast, and people revolted against it.
My mother used to say, 'You gotta exercise.' She would really pound on me to exercise every day. She was very physically fit; she was on the basketball team in high school in St. Louis in the 1920s, when women didn't do that. And she taught me to play tennis, taught me to walk and run, and I ran for 30 years pretty religiously.
I led the fight for the Clinton health care plan in 1994. We failed. I learned from that experience. What I learned is you can't pass a complicated government-run plan.
If the economy is still going forward, even at 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour, I think most people will stick with President Obama. I think people look at politics like they hire a plumber. I hire you to fix the bad pipe. If you fix it, I'll rehire you. If you don't fix it, I'm not going to rehire you.
I was raised in a working class family of Baptist faith, and I went to college on a church scholarship where early teachings were reinforced. Abortion was wrong, I was taught.
You don't lock into a ten-year family budget. You take it a year at a time - maybe even six months at a time. And then if the income really comes in the way you hope it does, then you can make some of those expenditures that you've been waiting to make. We think that same principle should apply to the national family we call America.
I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly.
Every proposal I'm making, every idea I'm advancing has a single, central purpose: to revive a failing economy and give working Americans the help and security they need.
Those who have prospered and profited from life's lottery have a moral obligation to share their good fortune.
What we have is two important values in conflict: freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns in a healthy democracy. You can't have both.
