Dan Webster
Dan Webster
Daniel Alan Websteris an American politician who has been a member of the United States House of Representatives since 2011. Webster, a Republican from Florida, initially represented Florida's 8th congressional district; since 2013, his district has been numbered the 10th district, located in the central part of the state. Previously, Webster served 28 years in the Florida state legislature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth27 April 1949
CountryUnited States of America
Some people have been talking about - every place I go, they bring up the issue of foreign aid. I go, 'You can't get rid of all foreign aid.'
I changed that system in Florida when I was the Speaker of the House - I was the Minority Leader; I saw for 16 years the way a power system works.
My job was to get a fair and open hearing to all ideas.
As a former minority leader who became the first Republican Speaker of the House in Florida since Reconstruction, I know that leadership is not an easy task.
Power focuses on self-preservation; principle focuses on making ideas successful.
There's a picture there that people realize that, we stop helping Israel, we lose God's hand, and we're in big time trouble.
There are amendments never offered, there are bills never heard, that are basically killed because of the process.
We passed a bill in 1997, signed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles, which created a pilot program for a novel experiment called Florida Virtual School. The notion of children using a computer for a classroom and reporting to virtual teachers wasn't exactly mainstream thinking in those days.
We're a nation of immigrants - there's no question about that. But we're also a nation of laws. I think we have to honor both of those.
You have got to clean your own house first before you tell other people that they aren't doing it right.
When you wait to the last minute, you rush to get things done, and the closer you get to the deadline, the less options you have.
The process for producing public policy in Congress is flawed. The process itself kills policy ideas through the bypassing of the rules and procedural decisions that limit discussion.
The only way to improve the GOP brand and make good public policy is to fix the process. This requires transforming the way Congress does business.
We have a spending problem, not a taxing problem. The less we spend, the more jobs we have the potential to create.