Quotes About Congress

A President and his wise men can only propose; but Congress disposes. It is when President and Congress agree that American history marches forward.

Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.

Congress is supposed to fund the IRS, and it has been steadily reducing the number of auditors and tax collectors the IRS has at the very time that the tax system has become vastly more complicated. And of course America continues to grow, so there's an increasing number of tax returns coming in. The IRS responds by doing exactly what Congress expects of them. That shouldn't surprise anyone. All bureaucracies do what they are told.

The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant. ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. ...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from 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.

While General Howe with a Large Armament is advancing towards New York, our Congress resolved to Declare the United Colonies free and Independent States. A Declaration for this Purpose, I expect, will this day pass Congress...It is gone so far that we must now be a free independent State, or a Conquered Country.

The President doesn't just appoint the Secretary of State, he appoints the Secretary of State, and then the Congress votes. And if the Congress approves that person, that person becomes Secretary of State.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

...Jabotinsky insisted that all energies be expended to force the Congress to join the boycott movement. Nothing less than a 'merciless fight' would be acceptable, cried Jabotinsky. 'The present Congress is duty bound to put the Jewish problem in Germany before the entire world...(We [Jews] must) destroy, destroy, destroy them, not only with the boycott, but politically, supporting all existing forces against them to isolate Germany from the civilized world...our enemy [Germany] must be destroyed.

June 1st is a date that is looming in everybody's mind with the final enforcement of the UIGEA. I actually think it may, finally, once and for all prove that it's an ineffective law. Congress created that law and now Congress has to do something to correct it.

It is difficult to get Latina and Asian women to speak out. We must make it clear it's not their problem, it's our problem. We need magazines like this one to keep talking about the issue. And know that we women in Congress are with you 100 percent.

There were two unpleasant surprises [about Washington]. One was the inertia of Congress, the length of time it takes to get a complicated piece of legislation through ... and the other was the irresponsibility of the press.

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.

The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.

It was the Congress that imposed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.

The Congress is pretty powerful if it wants to be.

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.

Frankly, nobody's every seen anything like what's happening today. When you have somebody getting a subpoena from the United States Congress to have your e-mails and all other information sent, and after - not before, after getting the subpoena, 33,000 e-mails are deleted and acid washed. And nobody even knows what that means, acid wash. It's a very expensive thing to do. Most people don't even know what it means.

Pro and con are opposites, that fact is clearly seen. If progress means to move forward, then what does congress mean?

There's no conscious plan here; my whole life in politics as a state legislator and in Congress has been about strengthening the middle class.

The 2014 election has given the GOP the rare opportunity to retroactively redeem its brand. The conventional perception, incessantly repeated by Democrats and the media, is that Washington dysfunction is the work of the Party of No. Expose the real agent of do-nothing. Show that, when Harry Reid can no longer consign House-passed legislation to oblivion, Congress can actually work.

The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill. If we are to have a billion dollars of navy, half a billion of farm relief, etc... the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes. It is for them, through their Congress, to decide how far they wish to go.

Congress must also enact pro-growth policies that encourage the economy to expand: like making tax relief permanent and repealing the death tax.

Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.

We have not inherited an easy world. If developments like the Industrial revolution, which began in England, and the gifts of science and technology have made life much easier for us, they have also made it more dangerous. There are threats now to our freedom, indeed to our very existence, that other generations could never even have imagined. There is first the threat of global war. No president, no Congress, no prime minister, no parliament can spend a day entirely free of this threat. If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

I think that Goldman Sachs and the Pentagon determine more of America's outcome then any president or any congress, that sounds a bit cynical, but I think I am right.

Year after year, President Bush has broken his campaign promises on college aid. And year after year, the Republican leadership in Congress has let him do it.

This is a matter of Congress authorizes spending. They order me to spend.

If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.

There's a War Crimes Act in the United States passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, which says that grave breaches of the Geneva Convention are subject to the death penalty. And that doesn't mean the soldier that committed them - that means the commanders.

Congress is not a party which fades when not in power

Hillary Clinton`s plan would trigger a constitutional crisis unlike almost anything we have ever seen before. In effect, she would be abolishing the law-making powers of Congress in order to write her own laws from the Oval Office. And you see what bad judgment she has. She has seriously bad judgment.

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.

I do think that Republicans are flirting with their tax cut, which has always been the narcotic of Republicans, that they in fact have to at some point, with any remote pretense of candor, abandon any pretense of a balanced budget.I mean, they talk about - because they are going to finance the tax cut by tax cuts. That's how they're going to do it. And I do think that the will is there right now in the Congress to act. I think they will be as close to unity as you will see on Capitol Hill this year.

There will be a focus on infrastructure. The American people had elected a builder to be President of the United States. We're going to work with members of Congress to move forward legislation to fund our infrastructure more effectively in the country.

In a democracy, hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can’t otherwise win their fights through elections, can’t win their fights in Congress, can’t win their fights for the Presidency, and can’t win their fights in Courts. For this right-wing minority, hostage-taking is all they have left – a last gasp of those who cannot cope with the realities of our democracy.

Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States.

The President's call for more math and science students is not being heeded by his party's leaders in Congress. They are cutting over $10 billion from student aide while refusing to fully fund No Child Left Behind. Something doesn't add up.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of ... constitutional principles.

What’s happened is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.

I think when it comes to climate change, the single most important thing in the world is for the United States' Congress to pass an effective bill that will put a price in carbon because if it starts costing something to emit carbon, this will provide an incentive, people do act on the basis to some extent of economic incentives to emit fewer greenhouse gases.

Well, dissent is the tradition in America, and I've been on the side of dissent a good bit of my career, particularly in the last many years of the Republican Congress.

Their moral influence will then do infinitely more to advance the true interests of religion, than any measures which they may call on Congress to enact.

This bill attempts to make sure that President Clinton is not allowed to do by Executive Order what Congress has declined to enact in the past two congressional sessions namely, to treat homosexuals as a special class protected under various titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

We've had a Congress that's spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop.

Congress has a responsibility to make sure our taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly and effectively, and at the same time, that our men and women in uniform have everything they need to carry out the War on Terror.