GovExec.com at 10, Part Four: The Decade in Quotes

In October 1996, shortly after the launch of GovExec.com, we began publishing a Quote of the Day. Since then, thousands of memorable quotations (well, some more memorable than others) have appeared on our home page under the "Quote/Unquote" banner. Here are some of our favorites:

"It was a mistake to open it up."
Rep. Bill Baker, R-Calif., responding to a question from The Wall Street Journal about whether it was a mistake to shut down the federal government during budget battles earlier this year.
Nov. 5, 1996

"Washington is like a dead mackerel on the beach. It shines and it stinks."
Outgoing Assistant Labor Secretary Joe Dear.
Jan. 16, 1997

"Today we can declare government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We, the American people, are the solution."
President Clinton, in his second inaugural address.
Jan. 21, 1997

"Just because he isn't promoting the Clinton administration's political agenda regarding nudity, he is being forced out of his job."
Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., on the transfer of Canaveral National Seashore Superintendent Wendell Simpson in the midst of a controversy over nude sunbathing along the seashore.
July 25, 1997

"You get the sense in talking to management in the bureau that they've just been holding on for a long time. There's no thought that they have the ability to make things better, and they're just trying to keep them from getting any worse."
Kevin Gover, the new head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Nov. 13, 1997

"The Vice President is in a holding room reinventing corned beef and cabbage."
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., prior to an appearance by Vice President Gore at the annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast in South Boston.
March 16, 1998

"If they can't manage the actions of Smokey the Bear, then how can the Forest Service be expected to manage our 191 million acres of national forests?"
Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, chairman of the House Resources Committee. Smokey the Bear endorsed the Subaru Forester in a controversial marketing campaign.
May 14, 1998

"These men died defending the Capitol of the United States of America, the symbol of freedom across the world."
Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, on slain Capitol Police Officers Jacob J. Chestnut and John Gibson.
July 28, 1998

"Although terror can turn building to rubble and laughter to tears, it can never--will never--deter America from its purpose and presence around the globe."
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Aug. 11, 1998

"I didn't know if this was sort of developing into some kind of a longer-term relationship than what I thought it initially might have been, that maybe he had some regular girlfriend who was furloughed."
Monica Lewinsky on her relationship with President Clinton, which began during the government shutdown of 1995.
Sept. 14, 1998

"The joke around our unit is that if they keep asking us to do more with less, eventually we'll be able to do everything with nothing."
Air Force Capt. Christopher DeColli.
Dec. 14, 1998

"She's a tough chick, cruising around the world as a force for good, presumably. She's a no-holds-barred kind of woman. I'd hate to meet her in a dark alley."
Lucy Lawless, TV's "Xena, Warrior Princess," on Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Jan. 14, 1999

"Our civil service reform will be based on an insight that is common in private industry: You pay for performance."
Vice President Al Gore.

Jan. 15, 1999 "The M bit [of OMB] hasn't worked since Nixon. If it did work, we wouldn't be here today."
Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., at a hearing on a proposal to separate the Office of Management and Budget into two separate offices.
Feb. 5, 1999

"To my friends on the left, government left unwatched can lead to injustice. To my friends on the right, government is not inherently evil."
Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., in his farewell address to Congress.
March 4, 1999

"Look, you get credit in Washington for legislation. Everybody wants a bill-signing ceremony at the White House. But real change comes when you change the culture of a government agency."
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.
May 24, 1999

"I will search out every last dime of waste and bureaucratic excess. I know how to do that."
Vice President Al Gore in a speech announcing his presidential candidacy.
June 17, 1999

"My guiding principle is government if necessary, but not necessarily government."
Texas governor and presidential candidate George W. Bush.
June 16, 1999

"We hope that night will be relatively boring."
Y2K czar John Koskinen on what it will be like in the federal Y2K Information Coordination Center on New Year's Eve.
Nov. 16, 1999

"Let there be no doubt: While I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it."
Vice President Al Gore on the Supreme Court decision that led to his concession of the 2000 presidential election.
Dec. 15, 2000

"That's progress from what they've been called in the past."
National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley, on using the term "human capital" to describe federal employees.
Feb. 13, 2001

"How would you like to come in here and change the way the federal government works?"
Clay Johnson, White House director of presidential personnel, on the Bush administration's pitch to prospective candidates to be deputy OMB director for management.
March 30, 2001

"A lot of people think live liposuction is what we do at OMB."
Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels, after ABC's "Good Morning America" bumped him from the program in favor of a segment on fat removal.
May 24, 2001

"Hallelujah! I get to go to work at GSA today!"
What GSA Administrator Steve Perry hopes his employees will say in the mornings.
July 24, 2001

"The response of the federal government across the board has been, I believe--from the president of the United States to rescue workers--magnificent."
Attorney General John Ashcroft on the federal response to terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
Sept. 12, 2001

"People out here never were able to put a personal face on the federal government -- it was always some nebulous thing in Washington, D.C."
A Shanksville, Pa. businessman, telling NPR how the town's perspective on Uncle Sam has changed. Hijacked American Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville.
Oct. 4, 2001

"Joseph and Thomas never formally enlisted in the fight for this war on terrorism, but they found themselves on the front lines."
Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, speaking at a memorial service for two Postal Service employees, Joseph Curseen and Thomas Morris, who died from anthrax.
Nov. 14, 2001

"The prospect of the country governed during its worst moment by a group of unelected bureaucrats, none officers of government under our Constitution, is an unsettling one."
Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, on the Bush administration's move to staff a shadow government of career officials to run federal programs in a national emergency.
March 13, 2002

"Civil servants got up on Sept. 12, returned to their desks and got down to the business of government. On Sept. 12, the terrorists failed."
OPM Director Kay Coles James at the Public Service Excellence Awards ceremony.
May 7, 2002

"It is a job made for failure."
Paul Light, vice president of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, on the job of secretary of the Homeland Security Department.
June 17, 2002

"The creation of the Department of Homeland Security is not an effort in union busting. The flexibility the president envisions for the new department is aimed at one result and one result only: ensuring the security of our homeland."
Office of Personnel Management Director Kay Coles James urging Congress to give the administration flexibility to waive civil service laws for a new Homeland Security Department.
July 17, 2002

"The pay."
Retiring Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., on the difference between politics and the entertainment business during an appearance on "Meet the Press." Thompson went on to play a district attorney on NBC's "Law and Order."
Sept. 5, 2002

"People who serve America are our true heroes, and people who do it out of the goodness of their hearts are saints."
John Spencer, star of the "The West Wing," at the "Service to America" medals program honoring outstanding federal employees.
Nov. 15, 2002

"We'll find a cause, we'll fix it and then we'll move on."
William Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for space flight, on the Columbia shuttle tragedy which claimed the lives of seven crew members.
Feb. 3, 2003

"It's a continuation of the hard work of over 175,000 Americans who go to work every single day in these 22 different agencies, who have been working on their piece of the homeland security puzzle for a long, long time."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on shifting most of the 22 agencies into the new department.
Feb. 25, 2003

"There's a little skepticism about going forward with pay for performance."
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, on the Bush administration's proposal to create a $500 million fund for performance-based pay raises for federal employees.
April 9, 2003

"They turn you down nine times out of 10 -- because they can and because they want to show you who the boss is."
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, describing the Office of Management and Budget's typical response to his ideas.
Dec. 8, 2003

"This was a government issue. It's acceptable practice to socialize with executive branch officials when there are not personal claims against them. That's all I'm going to say for now. Quack, quack."
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on his duck-hunting trip to Louisiana with Vice President Dick Cheney, after the court had agreed to hear the Bush administration's appeal in a case involving private meetings of Cheney's energy task force.
Feb. 12, 2004

"If I hear [AFGE President] John Gage use the word 'crony' one more time I'm going to leap across the table at him."
OPM Associate Director for Human Resources Management Ronald Sanders, describing negotiations with union leaders over potential favoritism in the new federal performance pay effort.
March 24, 2004.

"If Senator Kerry's real plan is to hire 100,000 new government employees, then he should say so."
Chris Jahn, president of the Contract Services Association, questioning a proposal by presidential hopeful John Kerry to eliminate the positions of 100,000 federal contractors.
April 8, 2004

"We have not yet had a catastrophic failure of a Corps of Engineers project, and that, for us, is the Holy Grail. But I'll tell you what, we are mighty close."
Maj. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, expressing concerns over growing maintenance backlogs.
Aug. 9, 2004

"If other female inmates chose to do something to Martha Stewart, we might not even have an official in her housing area."
Phil Glover, president of the American Federation of Government Employee's Council of Prison Locals, saying the federal prison system needs more correctional officers.
Sept. 12, 2004

"We just don't understand what our members were thinking when they voted for George Bush."
Frank Carelli, of the AFL-CIO's International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, on the election results.
Nov. 11, 2004

"The men and women at FEMA don't give a patooey about who the president is or who the governor is. Whenever people say stuff like that ... we're just offended by that because that's just not how we operate."
FEMA Director Michael Brown on allegations that the agency's response to Florida hurricanes last year was partly aimed at helping President Bush's reelection campaign.
March 24, 2005

"We cannot ever forget, we don't even want to forget."
Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking in Oklahoma City at the 10-year anniversary of the bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
April 20, 2005

"Modest but essential course corrections regarding organization will yield big dividends."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on the department's reorganization.
July 14, 2005

"It will take years, if not decades, to recover from these ill-conceived proposals."
Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., on the base closure commission's endorsement of a Pentagon plan to shift employees out of leased facilities in Northern Virginia.

Aug. 26, 2005

"The issues of the levees breaking and the catastrophic events that happened in New Orleans are the equivalent, in my view, of a terrorist attack by Mother Nature overlaid on a natural disaster."
Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the top federal official in charge of recovery efforts in New Orleans, on Hurricane Katrina.
Sept. 21, 2005

"Having DoD is like someone giving you an 800-pound gorilla. ... In the end, that gorilla is gonna do what it wants."
FEMA coordinating officer Scott Wells, on working with the Defense Department on disaster recovery efforts.
Dec. 9, 2005

"My administration expects to be held accountable for significantly improving the way the government works."
President Bush, on use of the Program Assessment Rating Tool to evaluate program effectiveness.
Feb. 6, 2006

"I guess I did get the boot."
Former FEMA director Michael Brown, coming to terms with his departure from the federal government.
March 7, 2006

"Where is it in the history of our country under any collective bargaining scheme...that allows the employer to unilaterally abrogate an agreement?"
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Judge Harry Edwards, during oral arguments over the Homeland Security Department's disputed labor relations system.
April 7, 2006

"It's not a projection; it's not looking into a crystal ball or a Ouija board. We're not being overly dramatic here."
Office of Personnel Management Director Linda Springer, on the large number of federal retirements expected over the next decade.
May 2, 2006

"Words are inadequate to describe how I feel about these recent events and the impact on the band of brothers and sisters of service members and veterans that we are supposed to serve."
Michael H. McLendon, the Veterans' Affairs deputy assistant secretary for policy, on his resignation after 26.5 million veterans' personal data became potentially compromised.
May 31, 2006

"Agencies may find it hard to sort out political grandstanding from genuine concern at such highly staged events."
Shelley Metzenbaum, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, on why congressional hearings do not always afford a good environment for discussing agency goal-setting.
Aug. 18, 2006