We are an important check on the powers of the executive. Our consent is necessary for the president to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and, in many respects, to conduct foreign policy. Whether we are of the same party, we are not the president's subordinates. We are his equal!

John McCain

This might be a conceit of government officials, but there's the idea that maybe you can make a difference. It's a conceit. Maybe it's unhealthy. We all believed we could make a difference.

Alexander Vindman

Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.

Amity Shlaes

I don't want to put words in Geithner's mouth, but I think he is generally against the revolving door of government officials taking jobs with companies that they have overseen or in roles that involve lobbying. At minimum, I'm pretty sure he felt that way about himself.

Andrew Ross Sorkin

I think Syria is often covered by phone. You have to talk to activists. You have to try to read the tea leaves. You have to talk to government officials. It's remote-control reporting in a way.

Anthony Shadid

When I wrote my eighth thriller, 'Inside Out,' in 2009, the villains were a group of CIA and other government officials who colluded to destroy a series of tapes depicting Americans torturing war-on-terror prisoners.

Barry Eisler

Disclosure of private e-mails from government officials has been a legal issue in many states.

Bill Dedman

State courts usually rule that correspondence between government officials, about government business, are public records, whether they use their government e-mail accounts or private ones.

Bill Dedman

The American people should not be footing the bill for federal employees who stonewall Congress or rewarding government officials' bad behavior.

Blake Farenthold

The seemingly omnipresent storm clouds hanging over the Constitution often make it hard to find a silver lining. Every day, the front page of The Drudge Report is littered with stories of government assaults on our civil liberties - from local government officials all the way up to the Oval Office.

Bob Barr

When conducted with proper preparation, and in a focused and professional manner, oversight of executive branch actions can reveal serious shortcomings by government officials and help prevent recurrence; the 'Waco hearings,' conducted over a two-week period in 1995, stand as an example of such an undertaking.

Bob Barr

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve.

Bob Riley

You elected government officials to make decisions and it's about time they started making good ones.

Bob Riley

Sometimes, government officials and legislators disagree on policies or issues. Yet, we invariably want the best for Hong Kong people.

Carrie Lam

You think that the CNN hosts can aggressively challenge government officials? I don't think so. It doesn't look that way at all. And of course, when you get to Fox News, they're a whole different animal: they're purely propaganda.

Cenk Uygur

I was not born into a rich family or a family of government officials.

Chen Guangbiao

The balance between faith and reason is for the determination of each individual, and of the people as a whole, not of unauthorized government officials uttering impious humbug as they arbitrarily try to define that balance.

Conrad Black

For too long, government officials have tinkered with Mexico's economic structure through piecemeal reforms that seek to ensure political stability but that do not address the key obstacles to greater innovation and competitiveness.

Denise Dresser

There are two classes of women in Soviet Russia. There is the professional class, which has taken the place of the nobility and includes government officials, artists, doctors, composers and writers as well as former members of the old nobility whose sympathy is with the Soviets, and also the peasant class.

Elsa Schiaparelli

My view was that government officials could not sit on the board of the central bank, and I am very happy that has been upheld.

Elvira Nabiullina

Most government officials are rushing headlong to solve the problems of 50 years ago, with their ears assailed by the sound of snails whizzing by.

Eric Johnston