Phil Gramm - Quotations

Quotations

• "If you are willing to tackle the tough issues, you don't need to worry about stepping on anyone's toes; they will stand aside and shove you to the front." — As quoted by former Gramm staffer Wayne A. Abernathy; September 12, 2002, before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

• "I have as many guns as I need, but I don't have as many guns as I want."

• About Gramm, Representative Marvin Leath said, "You can think whatever you like about Phil Gramm, but remember two things: He's smarter than you are, and he's tougher than a junkyard dog."

• "I wrote the first Reagan budget – the Gramm-Latta Budget that rebuilt national defense and that laid the foundation for a program of peace through strength; the Reagan program that tore down the Berlin Wall, that liberated Eastern Europe, that transformed the Soviet Union and that changed the world."

• "In economics, we define labor exploitation as paying people less than their marginal value product. I recently told Ed Whitacre he was probably the most exploited worker in American history because he took Southwestern Bell, which was the smallest of the former Bell companies, and he turned it into the dominant phone company on earth. His severance package should have been billions."

• "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness."

• "If we should vote next week on whether to begin producing cheese in a factory on the moon, I almost certainly would oppose it...On the other hand, if the government decided to institute the policy, it would be my objective to see that a Texas contractor builds this celestial cheese plant, that the milk comes from Texas cows, and that the Earth distribution center is located in Texas."