HBO's Bill Maher suggests a racial factor is behind the tea party movement.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): "I remember Speaker [Tip] O'Neil, when I got here, and there is one thing he and Speaker Boehner seem to have in common and that's a theme song. Speaker O'Neil's theme song was "I Will Be With You In Apple Blossom Time." By now, Speaker Boehner's is entitled to take as his theme song"It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To

"George Bush gave us the deficit. Gave us the recession. Gave us the deregulatory craziness that led us over the cliff. The tea party is the tail wagging the dog. It is the inmates running the asylum. These are people who don't know history, economics, politics, sociology, science, it is insane!" Fmr. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) said on HBO's "

"Whenever you do anything out of fear, how does it turn out?" Rush Limbaugh asked on his nationally syndicated radio show. "Disasturous, or potentially so."

"I can tell you that I have worked with the President and the administration since the beginning of this year to avoid being in this spot. I have offered ideas. I've negotiated. Not one time, not one time did the administration ever put any plan on the table. All they would do was criticize what I put out there. I stuck my neck out a mile to try to

"You know the Chinese are looking at us right now and they are just gleeful and incredulous at the way in which one of the great competitors is imploding on itself, because a group of absolutists and extremists don't understand the implication of what they are doing, and prepared to hold the entire economy hostage and it is unprecedented of anythin

"This is a lot of money here. This is a lot of savings. A lot of deep and substantial cuts. There is no upfront revenue in Senator Reid's proposal. It is just simply preposterous to suggest that it is not, does not represent an effort to come halfway towards the Republicans," Jay Carney said at his Friday briefing.

"I'm very frustrated. The President's speech last Monday night felt like to me he was saying 'everybody, go grab your pitchforks, run to a rich guy's house and go take his stuff because he's the problem or she's the problem. If they've got a jet, they're what's holding back the economy. And it's just the opposite. A lot of those people are the job

From her WSJ column: "So he is losing a battle in which he had superior forces—the presidency, the U.S. Senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser." (

“Let me just explain what’s been going on in Congress this week. “The American people have been waiting on us to do something to prevent default. They want us to end this crisis now. And over in the House of Representatives, you’ve got the Speaker of the House doing his job. Speaker Boehner’s been doing the hard work of governing, work

"Obvious what is being done in the House is not compromise. It is being jammed through with all kinds of non-transparent dealings, people shuffling in and out of the Republican Leader's office. We're recognizing that the only compromise that there is, is mine," Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said.

"If we do not come to an agreement, we could lose our country's AAA credit rating. Not because we do not have the capacity to pay our bills. We do. But because we did not have a AAA political system to match our AAA credit rating. Make no mistake, for those who say they oppose tax increases on anyone, and lower credit rating would result potentiall

"On Monday night I asked the American people to make their voice heard in this debate, and the response was overwhelming. So, please, to all the American people, keep it up. If you want to see a bipartisan compromise, a bill that can pass both Houses of Congress and that I can sign, let your members of Congress know. Make a phone call, send an e-ma

Question from Reporter #1: "You mentioned the word bipartisan. How does it promote an atmosphere of bipartisanship for the President to encourage citizens to call recalcitrant lawmakers and to use his campaign apparatus to tweet out the Twitter handles of Republicans to encourage them to encourage people to sort of jump all over folks to get them t

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) on Tea Party groups wanting to primary him because he now supports the Boehner bill. "I think what we have to ask ourselves is 'if you're telling me that I need to vote no against the Boehner plan' then what am I voting for?" Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said on The Laura Ingraham Show. "I'm going to stand with this Boehner p

Joe Scarborough: "I have got to clear this up. Mika heard two days ago on Capitol Hill Democrats all saying the same thing. And that is, this president has been invisible, he is not a leader. They said this all behind closed doors. Democratic leaders, Democratic rank-and-file. In fact, 40, 50 of the most powerful Democrats on the Hill. I will ju

Eugene Robinson talks with Melissa Harris-Perry about how much space is left in the GOP's game of debt chicken before the economy sails into the abyss.

Lawrence O'Donnell: "They truly did not know what the words debt ceiling meant. Look, let's admit it. It's true of most of the media, most everybody because these things were never covered before. And so they didn't know what it was. Now they were going to have to learn what it was, and they certainly weren't going to take their lesson from Wash

Jon Huntsman: "The president has shown no leadership. He doesn't have a plan on the table. My opponents in this race haven't even come up with what they support.""We've got to get on with this cancer that has taken over this country. We need to cut it out, we need to radiate it, we need to excise it. This cancer has taken over this countr

Bill O'Reilly discusses the debt ceiling standoff with Laura Ingraham.