If voters want bigger government, sooner or later they’re going to return to the genuine article, and that’s the Democratic Party,

We can’t afford that new benefit.

Many of us thought even before Katrina we couldn’t afford this benefit. We certainly today have to think we should put this benefit off.

It’s critical that any immigration reform package include a temporary worker program. Without it, we simply will not be addressing the issue.

I encouraged him to get in the race as a way to draw the others out.

We in the House have plenty of time between now and Thanksgiving to do it.

It’s not enough simply to change leaders; we need to change the direction of the party.

I think the heavier lifting is the budget-process and earmarks [reform]. Lobbyist reform is blaming somebody else. I just fear that there will be too much blaming and not focus on what we need to...

It was intense. This is a tough one.

There just is no vision for limited government,

We need more honest government. We need a more open process, a more honest process.

The White House wants (immigration reform), and many of us in the House do so as well,

There’s a lot of fat to trim. … I wonder if we’ve been serving in the same Congress.

The Scanlon thing, the Cunningham thing, I think you have more people waiting for the other shoe to drop.

They want to keep the ability to hide earmarks. They don’t want the scrutiny.

There’s kind of a left-right coalition against it.

That has brought home the fact that we need not just new leaders but a course correction.

It’s inexcusable, … We’re going to march ourselves right into the minority and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

I feel at some point that the farm state politics will overwhelm the Florida politics.

I think that this incident last week simply demonstrates that the INS is in a free fall.

There’s no shortage of places where the federal government can tighten its belt to pay the cost of the hurricane recovery effort. Let’s face it, after years of uninterrupted growth, the federal government is bloated.

The enormous cost of this proposal will only hasten Medicare’s insolvency, and we’ll have to rely on future Congresses to have the political courage that this Congress lacks,

Our government shouldn’t tell us where to travel and where not to travel.

Pat Tillman exemplified the sacrifice, selflessness, and service of the U.S. military. Nowadays, genuine role models in professional sports are few and far between, but Tillman proved that there are still heroes in sports.

We’ve got to take some of these definitions with a huge grain of salt.

[When U.S. congressman Jeff Flake visited Havana recently, promoting legislation to let Americans travel freely to Cuba, Fidel Castro had his top aides meet with Flake to ask whether the measure could really pass.] Yes,...

It’s not too late to try to contain the cost of this entitlement.

Our real leverage has come from the fear that DeLay will not have a post to come back to. They are deathly afraid of a leadership election in January.

If we make the decision that federal money will follow the child, we should make it a voucher. That’s a Republican principle.

Three hundred thousand manufactured homes? People are screaming about that, … I tell you, FEMA is a disaster.

You’d be sending home parents who brought kids here when they were 2. Do you leave the kids here with the neighbors for 10 years? That’s not a very conservative position in my view.

It’s more than likely there will be leadership elections in January. We don’t want to go into an election year without a permanent majority leader.

I have to be a little pessimistic. There is no real stomach for fiscal discipline right now.

For over 40 years, Americans have been prevented from traveling to Cuba, and for over 40 years, Castro hasn’t moved an inch closer to democracy, … If we are serious about undermining Castro and bringing...

If you look at fiscal conservatism these days, it’s in a sorry state. Republicans don’t even pretend anymore.

It’s unconscionable to pass this burden on to our kids,

$50 billion is simply too much to give FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) all at once and ensure proper oversight.

There was virtually no control at the border. They would go back for birthdays, for Christmas, for holidays, because they could always come back across the border easily.

I never believed that it was responsible to create this new entitlement, but it’s even more irresponsible now, given that Hurricane Katrina has created new spending priorities for the federal government,

My guess is that most states would gladly forgo 10 percent of their funding for the ability to make funding decisions,

The victims of this disaster deserve the swiftest and most efficient response that the federal government can provide,

The base is literally screaming, ‘Stop the spending!’

In the end, I think this looks like nothing more than an extremely expensive way to buy votes.

You can’t defend it,