Wendy Long Quotes

We've always said a filibuster is not appropriate for judicial nominees. A filibuster is a legislative tool designed to extract compromises. A judicial nominee is a person. You can't take the arm or leg of a nominee.

- Wendy Long

I guess I was a little idealistic and thought if you are honest and you're well-qualified and capable of waging a good fight, you can raise money. And what I learned is that our campaign finance laws are really a great big incumbent protection act.

- Wendy Long

Having been on the front lines of the confirmation battles involving Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, I know firsthand what is at stake when the Senate exercises its 'advise and consent' power over federal judges.

- Wendy Long

How great would it be to have a native son lead us out of turmoil and trouble to peace and justice? Someone who follows the rule of law and not the rule of mob... This is the path Donald Trump has set for our great nation, and it's the same path I'm on.

- Wendy Long

How does a religious employer's decision not to offer health plans with abortion coverage dictate to anyone what to do with her own body?

- Wendy Long

The America I love is slipping away.

- Wendy Long

I converted to Catholicism at age 35, after being raised as a Congregationalist in a New England Yankee family.

- Wendy Long

The American people have made clear that they want justices who have proven records of judicial restraint - exactly the kind of justices that Obama and Biden cannot abide.

- Wendy Long

Republicans can nominate bad Justices, too. Earl Warren, William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, David Souter... the list goes on.

- Wendy Long

New York City is the financial capital of the world. The Dodd-Frank Act, I think, is going to change that. It's going to send jobs to London and Geneva and Hong Kong and Sydney instead of keeping New York the financial center of the world.

- Wendy Long

I would drastically revise much of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation, which I call the 'Bureaucrat Full Employment Act.'

- Wendy Long

Conservatives who care about nominations of judges who practice judicial restraint are, constitutionally, restrained people themselves.

- Wendy Long

New York is a place where people have strong convictions.

- Wendy Long

As New York's United States Senator, I promise to reinstate the Moynihan 'Fisc Report' and work every day to address the imbalance of payments, first by focusing on reducing the amount of taxes we send to Washington, and second, by ensuring that funding formulas don't disadvantage New York.

- Wendy Long

Paul Ryan has been a responsible legislator and public servant, almost alone among members of Congress in his belief that we need to strengthen and save our social entitlements.

- Wendy Long

I'm kind of a small-town girl.

- Wendy Long

The Supreme Court overrules, distinguishes, and upholds prior precedents. Sometimes it ignores them. But it does not - cannot - 'defy' them.

- Wendy Long

The whole idea behind the EB-5 visa was to help create jobs in economically disadvantaged areas. But where big bucks are involved, corruption soon follows, and with Chuck Schumer and the EB-5 visa program, you need to follow the money.

- Wendy Long

Serious people need to work hard to reduce the debt, reduce taxes, and slash regulation on the small businesses and families that are the lifeblood of new jobs and innovation in our state.

- Wendy Long

If we can be sure of anything, it's that the immense challenges faced by our country and our nation cannot be solved by the same people in the same offices, casting the same votes for the same failed policies.

- Wendy Long

I would end the EB-5 program altogether, if we cannot establish that it can be used only to bring development to impoverished places where it otherwise truly would not occur under normal American market forces.

- Wendy Long

Obama and Biden want a bench crammed full of liberal judicial activists, and it's up to the American people to tell them 'no.'

- Wendy Long

Government has crowded out the role of many social institutions, including the Church, that have been a great force for good in public life.

- Wendy Long

The #NeverTrump crowd is running out of steam - and time. All of its attacks - that he's as liberal as Hillary Clinton, anti-immigrant, or a con man who will say anything to be elected - have failed.

- Wendy Long

Good judges do not side with anyone. They rule impartially and blindly based upon the law.

- Wendy Long

The best way to have empathy for people and the best way to have empathy for our Constitution is to appoint judges who will rule based on the law and to have empathy, if you will, for the law only and to rule based on the law.

- Wendy Long

I will stand up for judges who faithfully follow the law as it is written.

- Wendy Long

Judges should follow the law in deciding cases - not their own values, good or bad.

- Wendy Long

In a nation based on the 'consent of the governed,' judges are supposed to apply the laws the people have assented to.

- Wendy Long

Mainstream America, in the long run, will always stand for highly qualified, impartial judges and for a fair process and for senators who do their jobs and vote - not who unfairly smear good men like Judge Alito.

- Wendy Long

The thing is that Chuck Schumer, for all his power and influence, is a pretty pathetic figure. You go around New York State, and people make jokes about him and talk about how he shows up at the New York State Fair and has a staffer carrying a big sign saying 'Come meet Chuck Schumer.'

- Wendy Long

Senator Gillibrand is good at saying things that sound nice but have little substance. I don't think we elect our public officials to avoid taking a stand or a difficult position on anything.

- Wendy Long

Whether it's federal highway funds for the Thruway or Tappan Zee bridge project or the corrupt Cornhusker deal, Senator Gillibrand is willing to sell out our hardworking families. She has failed to address the problem that taxpayers in New York send much more to Washington that we get back.

- Wendy Long

If Roe v. Wade were overturned tomorrow, nobody would even notice, because the states are legislating their own laws about abortion, completely independent.

- Wendy Long

Many Americans have sensed there is a very corrupt pay-to-play system going on in Washington.

- Wendy Long

The power of incumbency and the power of money is just overwhelming.

- Wendy Long

Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written.

- Wendy Long

With so many serious issues and responsibilities before the United States Senate, I think New York needs an independent senator who thinks for herself, not someone who just rubberstamps the Obama agenda or checks with Chuck Schumer and says, 'Me too.'

- Wendy Long

Lady Justice doesn't have empathy for anyone. She rules strictly based upon the law, and that's really the only way that our system can function properly under the Constitution.

- Wendy Long

Thinking of ourselves as members of 'this group' or 'that group,' I think that's a recipe for division.

- Wendy Long

Chuck Schumer is the face of the ruling class.

- Wendy Long

I believe in the idea of sacrifice and fighting for what's right and giving something back to the country that's given me so much.

- Wendy Long

It's a sacrifice for me. It's not really something I want to do. I don't love the idea of being a U.S. senator; I love the idea of being a mother.

- Wendy Long

New York voters agree on this: There is too much corruption in government - federal, state, and local.

- Wendy Long

If you have empathy for both sides, then that's the same as having no empathy at all.

- Wendy Long

We are in desperate need of a return to limited, constitutional government.

- Wendy Long

There is regressivity built into the tax code by virtue of its complexity.

- Wendy Long

I'm here to speak for those who say the American Dream isn't working for them, because I know it isn't. I'm here to say it's not your fault: the ruling class... has failed you.

- Wendy Long

What I do know is that liberal Democrat policies in our big cities are not helping anybody, especially our big cities.

- Wendy Long

Christians are being persecuted, not just in the Middle East but here in this country.

- Wendy Long

I've enjoyed the benefits of this country, which has been very good to me.

- Wendy Long

The immigration laws of the United States should not be used to buy and sell political favors.

- Wendy Long

Looking at the history of our country, we have been and we are pro-immigrant, but we aren't going to be much of a country if we don't take care of our own people first and if we don't observe the rule of law.

- Wendy Long

There are no George Baileys anymore.

- Wendy Long

Kirsten Gillibrand and I are very similar in our biographies. We're both mothers, we're both lawyers. But we couldn't be more different in our beliefs, in our principles, in our politics.

- Wendy Long

Our government is corrupt.

- Wendy Long

A judge is supposed to have empathy for no one but simply to follow the law.

- Wendy Long

I think Republicans make a mistake when they seek to be 'Democrat light.'

- Wendy Long

We have to have legal immigration, which has to be something that benefits our country.

- Wendy Long

My son was 8 or 9, and he really wanted a gun. It was Christmas, and I said to my husband, 'It's time for a gun.'

- Wendy Long