26 Quotes by Jeff Merkley

A budget should be judged by whether it creates a foundation for the success of American working families striving to buy a house, or to send their kids to college, or to save a little for retirement and, if they're lucky, a vacation.

It's time to level the playing field for small business owners and give them the same health care choices that large corporations have. Because they don't have as many employees, they have little ability to negotiate lower rates.

There's an enormous amount of corruption, and as one American adviser put it to me, "The police in Afghanistan are thugs. We equip them, we train them, and now they are equipped and trained thugs."

What [Bernie] Sanders has done is he's focused the nation on the fact that these things are not inevitable. They are the result of policies. We can do better to create an economy that works well for working Americans.

Americans have powerfully sensed that we're off track. There is a structural challenge in our economy that needs to be addressed.

That's a question best put to Bernie Sanders himself, but I think that he will probably put forward ideas that are related to the corrupting role of Citizens United and Buckley versus Valeo court decisions and the need to restore a by-and-for-the-people republic envisioned in our Constitution instead of the of-, by- and for-the-most-powerful system that we have right now.

Real choice is clear information and the right to walk away from a bad deal without leaving your wallet behind.

Budgets are nothing if not statements of priorities.

We can no longer continue with a status quo energy policy. We must create sustainable clean energy jobs and leave the planet to our children and grandchildren in better shape than we found it.