As they see it.

• Position: Dwight Evans, Kraig Paulsen, Christopher J. Dodd, Paul S. Grogan, John Vratil and Daniel Berland - Brief article

"The problem with the budget is that the people want [what] they're not willing to pay for. It's as simple as that."

--Pennsylvania Representative Dwight Evans at NCSL s Fall Forum in Phoenix, in an AP story in The Washington Post.

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"Somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 percent of the work you do as a legislator is a complete and total waste of time. The problem is you don't know which is the 20 percent and which is the 80 percent until it's all over. So you've got to do it all."

--Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen to the Omaha World-Herald.

"intense partisan polarization has raised the stakes in every debate and on every vote, making it difficult to lose with grace and nearly impossible to compromise without cost."

--U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd in his farewell address to the Senate, in The Washington Post.

"Controlling the cost of health care in Massachusetts is now the ultimate education issue."

--Paul S. Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, on a recent report showing that millions of dollars in state funding to local school districts has been used to cover increasing health care costs for school employees rather...