“In Henry's case, it's human and it's personal and he's a decent and wonderful man, and many of you have known him over the years, ... And I think if you were to drop him a little note and let him know that you share his pain and you're sorry that doing his duty leads to that kind of treatment by this White House, I think he would be deeply grateful, because he's a wonderful person.”
“This is not because IRS employees are bad human beings or lazy human beings or stupid human beings; it is because they have been asked to manage and administer a tax code that has become impossible,”
“I want to get this bill signed, so for the first time in 16 years, the American people have a tax cut, but we're not going to give it up flippantly, we're going to work to keep it. I think the president has to look at what does he want. He's not going to get everything he wants; this is not a one-way street.”
“[On the Supreme Court striking down a law barring] indecent ... I think we're better to have a crash program to develop an inexpensive software package for parents to allow them to monitor the sets for their kids. It is doable and the technology is available and it's legitimate for parents as parents to monitor what their children see on the Internet.”
“We probably should have almost maniacally focused on cutting taxes, reforming government, working on saving Social Security, recognize that would cause a big fight, accept that was a better fight for us than drifting into October with, as people kept saying, no national themes, no national dialogue,”
“What the president should recognize is that the American people are tired of thousands of pages of regulations, of audits they don't understand by agents they can't talk with from a bureaucracy they can't control,”
“Any effort to explain Iraq as 'We are on track and making progress' is nonsense. The left has a constant drumbeat that this is Vietnam and a bottomless pit. The daily and weekly casualties leave people feeling that things aren't going well.”
“This is a crossroads for the Bush presidency. This is a very exciting period about what is effective government in the 21st century. Either he will be FDR and lead a dramatic change of government, or he will be defender of a failed system. The biggest political challenge for the next two years is to re-centre the government.”
