Alan Grayson

 

He’s the newly elected U.S. representative for Florida’s 8th Congressional District. Grayson, 51, lives in Orlando with his wife and five children, ages 4 to 14.  

Alan Grayson

I think we’ve had an interesting illustration for the past eight years of what happens when government is run by people who don’t care about government and don’t want to make government do a good job. What happens is human needs go unmet and our priorities take a turn for the worse, and people have a sense that the country is heading in the wrong direction.

What we’re looking for, as the president often says, is not big government or small government; what we’re looking for is good government. Good government meets human needs.

I think we’re in the process of moving beyond labels, liberal or conservative.

Honestly, I think things have gone extraordinarily well for the last three months since taking office. I don’t see any “rookie” mistakes so far, but I’m sure if I had made some the other side would be more than happy to point them out.

It was greed, no question about it, that got the country into this financial mess. I have read the financial statements for AIG and Fannie Mae, after they both went bankrupt, and what I’ve found is enormous debt that no rational person working for these companies could have possibly thought was payable by anybody but the taxpayer. These companies were, in essence, huge Ponzi schemes, with the last person going in on the schemes being you and me. When you reward greed and stupidity, you get more of them.

Partisanship in Congress is more intense than I expected, and it’s entirely due to the other side’s obstructionism.

I think Barack Obama is the same in private as he is in public. He is a person who is modest, he’s funny, he’s down to earth, he’s fun to be with, and he has a great sense of responsibility for the public well-being. He’s someone who certainly would be fun to have a beer with.

Only a tiny fraction of the population is ideologically motivated.

I don’t have a dog as my friend in Washington, and I don’t need one.

Whatever happens the next two years, I am proud to say that at least I got rid of Ric Keller.

When I’m in Washington every week, I’m thinking about my wife and kids. This is a hard, hard job for someone with five young children. If you had asked me what is the most difficult part of the job, it’s leaving my family every week to try to make things better for everyone else.