Quotes About Congress

You need to fight cases in the courts, but you certainly cannot rely on the courts, you need to testify in Congress and lobby your Congress person, but you certainly cannot rely on Congress. You need to speak out in the media, but you cannot totally trust the media either. You need to work within the academy because that's an influential opinion body. I think that one of the lessons that people have learned in the civil rights community is that it is generally not enough to focus on litigation in the courts.

The Court's decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery. That philosophy ignores the American people's decision to give Congress '[a]ll legislative Powers' enumerated in the Constitution. They made Congress, not this Court, responsible for both making laws and mending them.

It has now been over 7 years since Congress last raised the minimum wage to its current level of $5.15 per hour. Since that last increase, Congress's failure to adjust the wage for inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the minimum wage to record low levels.

The budgets we work on in Congress are more than just fiscal documents; they are a reflection of our moral values as well. In choosing where to spend money, members of Congress choose what priorities they value.

Justice White's conclusion is perhaps correct, if one assumes that the task of a court of law is to plumb the intent of the particular Congress that enacted a particular provision. That methodology is not mine nor, I think, the one that courts have traditionally followed. It is our task, as I see it, not to enter the minds of the Members of Congress - who need have nothing in mind in order for their votes to be both lawful and effective - but rather to give fair and reasonable meaning to the text of the United States Code, adopted by various Congresses at various times.

Congress has changed the Social Security system over time, and over 20 times in the past Congress has raised taxes on Social Security in payroll taxes into the system.

A Bush Administration will, I believe, enjoy a better relationship with the new Congress, although President-elect Bush will be faced with real challenges in getting along with the Congress.

We already know that there are those close to James Comey who have a very different take, if there are tapes, of course, that would be the best evidence of what took place. If they exist, Congress needs to get them. If they're not provided willingly, Congress should subpoena them. And if they're not in existence, if this was yet another fabrication by the president, he needs to come clean about it.

Consider that in a galaxy far, far away (otherwise known as the 1990s), President Clinton felt that he had to assure an isolationist Republican Congress - repeat after me, an isolationist Republican Congress - that the 20,000 U.S. peacekeeping troops he promised Bosnia as part of the Dayton Accords would only stay deployed for a single calendar year.

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.

In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the president] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a congress?

We have unleashed aspirations of youngsters. Democracy is not going to go backwards. India is too big a country to be run by one person. We are going to accelerate the process of democratization and I think that is the biggest opportunity for Congress party because that is the DNA of the Congress

Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head, John Conyers, says he doesn't understand it. It'll be passed by Congress that has not read it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?

No law can give Congress a backbone if it refuses to stand off as the coequal branch the Constitution made it.

I do not have regrets. I believe I helped preserve the peace for this country. Why should I regret that? What I accomplished was approved by Congress -- which represents our people. All of you live in safety from domestic enemies because of security from the police. Likewise, you live in safety from foreign enemies because our military keeps them from attacking us.

If Congress wants to mess with the retirement program, why don't we let them start by changing their retirement program, and not have one, instead of talking about getting rid of Social Security and Medicare that was robbed $700 billion dollars to pay for Obamacare.

A majority of senators should be able to adopt rules at the beginning of each Congress.

Mandatory minimum sentences give no discretion to judges about the amount of time that the person should receive once a guilty verdict is rendered. Harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses were passed by Congress in the 1980s as part of the war on drugs and the "get tough" movement, sentences that have helped to fuel our nation's prison boom and have also greatly aggravated racial disparities, particularly in the application of mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine.

If they're willing to stand at polls for countless hours in the rain, as many did, then I should surely stand up for them here in the halls of Congress.

Congress has become so dysfunctional that more and more of a burden is placed on the agencies to fill in the gaps. And the gaps get bigger and bigger because they're not constantly refreshed and tweaked.

Mike Pence, when he was in Congress, voted against raising the minimum wage above $5.15. And he has been a one-man bulwark against minimum wage increases in Indiana.

I wonder much that a court of Law should be in doubt whether a Resolution of Congress can superceed the Law of a Sovereign State.

The Congress has historically played covert communal politics in order to create what in India we call vote banks where you pit one community against another and so on in order to secure votes.

In 2003, Congress authorized the construction of a visitor center for the Vietnam Memorial to help provide information and educate the public about the memorial and the Vietnam War.

There are 435 members of Congress. There's one 'Morning Joe' show. Hopefully, we can keep hammering the argument that you can disagree with other people and have debates but remain civil.

The right of petition, I have said, was not conferred on the People by the Constitution, but was a pre-existing right, reserved by the People out of the grants of power made to Congress.

Aren't we supposed to believe that if you are an elected official, if you serve in Congress, you are representing all the people of your district not just the people who voted for you, not [just] the people who you agree with?

There is no debate in the scientific community...We need [Congress] to change things, not to deny what's happening.

When the ACLU took my case and we got a ruling I think, for the first time, they could - the Congress could put out the report internally but they couldn't put it out at taxpayers' expense around the country. And I felt odd about that because I, in a way, I was interfering with free speech, but then, you can't always win.

My friends in the Congress, I have known Coretta King since I went south during the civil rights movement as a lawyer. She was a vibrant, consistent, totally dedicated partner with her husband.

Women administer the home. They set the rules, enforce them, mete out justice for violations. Thus, like Congress, they legislate; like the Executive, they administer; like the courts, they interpret the rules. It is an ideal experience for politics.

If a trip is worth taking, members of Congress should be prepared to justify paying for it out of their office accounts.

If Obamacare is allowed to stand - and Congress is allowed to make the purchase of government-endorsed health insurance compulsory - there will be no meaningful limit on Washington's reach into the lives of the American people. That is certainly not what the Founders intended.

I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you're a Democrat. Sometimes that's good, obviously, and sometimes that's obviously bad. But in the news business, there's no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news.

It's a shame that we have to use whatever leverage we have in Congress to get the president to deal with the biggest problem confronting our future. And that's our excessive spending.

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

My father ran for Congress in 2004, and I got a sense that there is no way to achieve much success without a certain amount of compromise.

The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

I think it can be very important for the president to seek congressional approval for war , even though not constitutionally required to do so, in certain situations. It makes sense to go to Congress to signal our national resolve and our willingness to fight to defend other nations or the freedom of their peoples.

The right to participate in the choice of representatives for Congress includes, as we have said, the right to cast a ballot and to have it counted at the general election whether for the successful candidate or not.

I think the most important thing is the American people have lost trust and confidence in the people they have sent up to Congress as elected leaders. And I think that it is so important to reconnect to the people. And I think that the last election showed people weren't running back to the Republican Party. They did show that they weren't happy with the policies coming out of the Democrat Party. But they are trying to find individuals that will go up and be their voice, that will resemble them, that will take their cares and concerns to Washington, D.C.

There's not an appropriations bill in the last 10 years that the-that Democrats passed in the Congress. We haven't spent any money of your taxes in the last decade.

I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement.

My parents both were doing the Civil Rights Movement, were very involved with the civil rights to Congress. And my friends' parents were as well.

To help U.S. workers, farmers and businesses, and Americas long-term economic security, Congress should take decisive action to bring about fair trade with China, instead of squandering this opportunity on a weak Republican bill.

What standards are upheld by the scientific community affect the community internally, and also affect its relations with society at large, including Congress.

Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.