The only thing that gets reported are the tragedies. But it rarely gets reported when somebody actually uses their Second Amendment right with a gun to protect themselves against a criminal.
— Steve Scalise
Our Founding Fathers believed strongly in gun rights for citizens.
I had miracles. I had angels.
I fought really hard to win a seat in Congress, and everybody else did, too.
If you're making enemies along the way, you're going to limit the ability for yourself to be successful in advancing your causes.
Let's lower costs for health care. Let's put patients in charge of their solutions.
The thing that probably frustrated me and hurt me the most was when there were inaccurate stories written about me or stories that were written that were trying to imply or infer things that weren't true.
Any time you're working on big things, you're going to get criticized along the way.
I said I reject any form of bigotry, bigotry of all kinds.
The bottom line is, what are we doing to Obamacare? We eviscerate the law in our bill, and then we do things like expanding health savings accounts, which give families real flexibility. We reform Medicaid.
So let's find a way to protect people differently than Obamacare, because Obamacare's answer was, 'Just make everybody pay more'.
Look at what happened in the 1990s: when they balanced the federal budget, it was through growth in the economy and controlling spending.
I'm very proud of the Italian heritage of my great-grandparents, who came here from Italy, and how they helped be a part of the American Dream, and that's something we want to continue to make available to everybody who wants to come here.
Barack Obama, he just sits out. He sits back; he criticizes everybody. He's got his professorial attitude, real condescending, as if he's got all the answers.
I was on the board of Teach for America. And we transformed a failed public school system in the City of New Orleans, probably the most corrupted and failed system in the country.
Dr. King challenged our country to fulfill the promises of liberty, equality, and justice prescribed in the founding of our great nation. Leading by example, he stressed the teachings of tolerance, service, and love, regardless of race, color, or creed.
There are a lot of people in the Rust Belt who felt like, 'Nobody's concerned about me, and my shot at the American dream is going away.' We need to restore that.
There's no excuse for breaking the law.
I knew I was shot. Didn't know how bad it was. You know, in a weird way, your body kind of goes numb. You know, as bad as the wounds were - and obviously, I know now how severe it was - at the time, I guess my body had been shutting down a lot of the real pain.
In the face of unspeakable evil, our whole nation must respond with countless acts of kindness, warmth and generosity.
If you had a job, and every day you're going back home and telling all your friends how horrible your job is and how horrible your employer is, after a while, they're going to start believing you. And then at some point, they're going to start questioning you and say, 'Why, if it's so bad, are you doing it?'
If you're holding a grudge against somebody over the battle you just went through, you might be working with them on the next bill.
We ought to have a platform to plan to save Medicare from bankruptcy.
When you get into this line of work, you're in public office, you expect you're gonna have cheap shots taken at you. That's part of the process.
My goal is to get leadership to bring more conservative policies to the floor; it's not the other way around to get conservatives to vote for something they don't like. It's to get a more conservative product, and we've actually delivered on a number of occasions there.
You look at Rand Paul's bill. He's got refundable tax credits. So many other bills that are out there have had this. Dr. Tom Price, who is secretary of HHS under President Trump, he had an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill that had tax credits.
Our founding fathers made no mistake when they included the right to peaceably assemble among the first tenets of democracy.
You can't say it's broken, but let's keep some of Obamacare. You have to start over.
Mexico secures their border. Why shouldn't we be able to secure ours?
The president does not have the option of choosing which laws he will follow and which he will ignore.
We can pass conservative policy that unites us.
You want to prevent war, you talk, talk, but you also have to back it up with actions.
I'm not for amnesty. People must play by the rules. And border enforcement must come first.
Barack Obama destroyed the middle class. Whatever you want to say about his rhetoric, the rich got richer, but the poor got poorer, and the middle class got wiped out. That's really what Trump appealed to and inspired in the forgotten man.
The problem is not that there are too many guns. It's that there are people that will go out and break the law, whether it's a gun or some other weapon or a bomb.
I just know how lucky I am.
I think it's a shame that the day somebody hears about a shooting, the first thing they think about is, 'How can I go promote my gun control agenda?' as opposed to saying, 'How do I go pray and help the families that are suffering?'
When everybody goes into their separate corners, it's just real easy to demonize the other side instead of saying, 'Okay, how can we come together and figure out how to get done what's important for the country?'
There are lot of issues we passed out of the House that have gotten not only a lot of Republican support - Tea Party and every group within the Republican conference - but even Democrats.
At the end of the day, I'm really proud of the work I did to help kids get an equal opportunity, and a lot of them have.
You gotta get into some confrontations sometimes to get the right result on the floor, but I think the bulk of our membership wants us to work out problems before a bill comes to the floor.
There was this mischaracterization that I ran for leadership to be the guy to get conservatives to vote for leadership. I said I would be a conservative voice at the leadership table.
You want to talk about something that truly changes the game in this country, Medicaid is one of the most failed forms of health care.
As all of us here have known, and as people all throughout the nation are witnessing, Gabby Giffords is a fighter.
The idea of strengthening health savings accounts... that bolsters the marketplace.
There was a very strong bipartisan coalition in Congress under President Bill Clinton that passed the Defense of Marriage Act. And you've had a majority of the states in this country that have strongly stated that marriage ought to be remain the union between one man and one woman.
Most Americans get that there is a need for a safety net in our country, and we support that safety net.
I've been very proud of a lot of the work I've done in New Orleans.
I'm prepared to continue doing what we need to do to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
The states should have much more responsibility for infrastructure building.
