Top 67 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Schumer

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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

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

The highest priority you can have is education.

We all agreed on the framework: Pass DACA protections and additional border security measures excluding the wall. We agreed that the president Donald Trump would support enshrining the DACA protections into law. What remains to be negotiated are the details of border security with a mutual goal of finalizing all the details as soon as possible. While both sides agreed that the wall would not be any part of this agreement, the president made clear he intends to pursue it at a later time, and we made clear that we would continue to oppose it.

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

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

I think we could be at a tipping point

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.

When a nominee doesn't get 60 votes, you shouldn't change the rules, you should change the nominee.

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.

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?.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

The only way we're gonna work with Donald Trump is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Donald Trump, when he gives his speeches, talks like a populist. And he talks to middle class and working America and poor people. But when he governs, at least in his first 40 days, he governs like a hard-right guy.