What you have here is a unique opportunity where the entire infrastructure of a pretty big region was decimated — both the social infrastructure and the economic one,

One of the assumptions is that it becomes increasingly difficult to get things done in an election year, especially things where tough decisions have to be made.

If these ideas are given a fair chance in New Orleans and the gulf area, … their popularity and success will create a momentum for expanding them elsewhere.

You look at the relationship between 50 state sovereigns and the federal government, and the states always come out on the short end of the stick. They’ve consistently traded autonomy for cash, and they’ve consistently...

He needs to be cognizant of congressional egos and their involvement in decisions going forward. He’s got to make up 12-15 points to be effective. He can get there.

My guess is this is not a time when anyone is looking at a zero-sum game between one state or another.

It is once in a generation that an opportunity like this comes along, where the status quo is called into question and where the policy community and Congress can look at it, change it and...

They will not let anything stand in the way of remaining in the majority, even if it means crossing swords with the president.

If this trend continues, it suggests a very different 2006. If Republicans enter the year on the working assumption that they’re not going to pick up any meaningful support on the Democratic side on anything,...

If government continues to do things with enormous effects on business, they’ll just find another way to protect their interests. There’s too much at stake to walk away.

What they know is that the actual answers to increase supply or take down demand offer no quick fixes.

Their survival instincts are on high alert.

I would be surprised if there’s not time set aside to tell that story.

In the short run, you have to have higher taxes to pay for it. Or in the long run, you run up a larger debt and at some point, the debt becomes large enough that...

There is a sense this year that anything is possible, that they have the rapt attention of the leadership.

That has created a chilling effect on the desire to move an ambitious, comprehensive agenda and may deter Republicans from engaging in a fundamental health care reform debate or tax reform debate.

The extent to which he used the State of the Union to launch and define the ‘ownership society’ concept is important because if you take it to its natural extreme, the ownership society would essentially...

In the last two or three weeks, there has been an increasing restlessness among conservatives, mostly about the open-ended (financial) response to Katrina, … There’s a growing number of conservative voters coming to the conclusion...

Crises cause government to grow. The test today will be how much of the federal response occurs within the existing boxes or through innovative ways.

Boomers always struck me as very self-centered and self-important, because there are so many of us. We’re always in the middle of the next fun moment at some everlasting party, and we’re not able to...

They’d (lawmakers) would like to get a lot of these things out of the way before the end of the year.

It’s a free-for-all atmosphere,

The legislative calendar is shorter and, almost by definition in an election year, tempers will be shorter, too.

They did a lot of tier-two issues that were important to certain constituencies but that, in and of themselves, were not of any great magnitude. It was not a year for, obviously, enactment or even...

Bad things that were going to happen have not happened,

It’s going to push some people who are at the margins of being able to afford it into the consumer category.

What we have is a chance for Congress and president to take a really long hard look at 40 years of social welfare failure in that region and try to reverse that. You don’t want...

He sees this as an opportunity to revamp the entire relationship of the federal government to the region.

I think what we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks is the first evidence of triangulation between congressional Republicans. They will not let anything stand in the way of remaining in the majority, even...

The conundrum they face is that they know better.

This second round of tax cuts was probably the high point, domestically, of Bush’s administration. No sooner were they put in place, then the GDP (gross domestic product) growth hit 4 percent and it’s been...

It certainly is the perfect storm of aggravating or provoking congressional egos and the president getting his back up and saying the least diplomatic thing he could have said.