Claire McCaskill Thinking Quotations

There are three legs of the stool; spending, entitlements and making the tax code fair and equitable. That's the three legs of the stool. If we do all of those in a responsible, bipartisan way, I think the American people would all be very, very happy.

I think there are certain folks in Missouri that don't trust government. And they haven't trusted government for a long time.

It was a very easy way to have a group of friends on a very large campus - a sense of identity. It was a great place to learn how to navigate a variety of personalities, which you kind of have to do in life. You've got the shy woman and you've got the obnoxious woman and you've got the brainiac and you've got the social climber and you've got the introvert and the extrovert, and you're all living together. I think it gave me valuable experience in learning how to live with people that are different than you are. And that's an important lesson. You can bet it comes in very handy in the Senate.

I have fought the establishment, run primaries, my entire career. I think that for Planned Parenthood or NARAL or the Human Rights Campaign to be considered the establishment, somebody`s not paying close attention to how American politics works.

I do not begrudge Bill Clinton's working for his wife, but the one thing I would say is really important to President Clinton to think about right now, because of the larger megaphone he has as a former president, he really needs to be careful with the truth.

I think I'm the last Democrat left in the Senate after Russ Feingold was defeated that won't take earmarks.

So it is the business community and agricultural community who I think might have the most influence on helping us make this effort more bipartisan.

You can be a victim of a crime and not exercise great judgment. And when women have been sexually assaulted, they feel like they have to have been perfect in order to have anybody believe them. They think nobody will believe them unless a stranger jumped out from behind a bush with a knife - not that they got too drunk and that a guy they thought they knew, you know, took advantage of them in a physical, assaultive way.

There's nothing that irritates Americans more than the fact that some members of Congress think they are entitled to their own set of rules. And it's true - too many people in Washington live in an alternate reality.

Even though we know sexual assault is still dramatically underreported, I think women are much more empowered today than they used to be.

I think that I was just on the cusp of the generation that was beginning to really challenge some of the assumptions about the role of women and the role of men on campus.

I want to compliment the fraternity and sorority organizations for taking the time to meet with us and then removing their support from the legislation that would have been so counterproductive for a goal that I think we all share - and that is making campuses safer and the successful prosecution of people who commit serious crimes. So, good on them that they backed off, and we don't have to fight them.