A Quote by Mark Udall

Reform is not for the short-winded. I'm committed to making sure the Senate is more than just a graveyard for good ideas. — © Mark Udall
Reform is not for the short-winded. I'm committed to making sure the Senate is more than just a graveyard for good ideas.
When it comes to Senate reform, in general, I've always been a believer in an elected Senate and would hope to achieve aspects of Senate reform.
What does the doctrine of American exceptionalism empower the United States to do? Nothing more than to act better than traditional empires - committed to looting and conquest - have done. So that's American exceptionalism: an exceptionalism based on noble ideas, ideas that it holds itself to even when it falls short of them.
We wouldn't even be where we are had it not been that 70% of Hispanics voted for President Obama, voted Democratic in the last election. That caused an epiphany in the Senate, that's for sure. So all of a sudden we have already passed comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate. That's a big victory.
I think, first and foremost, showing up, making sure that Democrats focus not just on elections, not just on presidential elections, but we begin the process of rebuilding the infrastructure of the party at the grassroots. We begin going out to all those rural counties and begin having a conversation with rural voters and making sure that we hear their concerns, hear their complaints, and also educate them about what we are doing, making sure that we focus on state legislative races, not just congressional, Senate, governor, and presidential races.
I think good publicists are just like good mommies - always looking out, making sure folks are comfortable and making sure that folks are on time and making sure that folks are getting what they need and know what they need to do.
Leadership has to be focused on some very radical ideas that only we as 21st Century people can talk about: making sure people have a livelihood, making sure people receive a living wage, making sure the environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced and cherished and not destroyed. Making sure people are healthy in what they eat, making sure we hold people and corporations accountable for the damage they do not only to our environment but to our institutions.
It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. It will take a graveyard.
I bet the people who are in the auto industry right now have more than 10,000 good ideas about what might work and what we need to do is not come up with more good ideas. We need to go and test as many of those good ideas as possible.
Congress and the White House are working out their scheme for pushing through a healthcare 'reform' bill that has more pages than the U.S. Constitution has words. I guarantee you that not a single member of the House or Senate has a complete understanding of that legislation any more than they understood all the implications of the USA PATRIOT Act back in 2001.
How does humility manifest itself in leadership and in life? A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having the ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about building the team than exalting self, about recognizing contribution than being recognized for making it.
Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is.
The only reason the House hasn't done even more damage is that the Senate often sands down the most noxious ideas, making the bills merely bad, not disastrous.
I think there's bipartisan support in the Senate to pass a good reform bill.
Look, all this is about is utilizing the rules of the Senate, using a majority of the senators, to make sure that we get health reform done. We cannot wait another day.
When you work in the United States Senate, and you are around people of all different ideas and beliefs, you realize that what our Founding Fathers did that was so genius, is that they made the Senate the place where compromises are supposed to happen because of the makeup of the Senate.
The wealthiest place on the planet is the graveyard, because in the graveyard we will find inventions that we were never ever exposed to, ideas, dreams that never became a reality, hopes and aspirations that were never acted upon.
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