Quotes About Congress

The case of Johnson v. M'Intosh is exactly why Congress can pass legislation as it did with the Rio Tinto land mine deal because Congress took the land from the tribes, ignores their sacred connections to it, their cultural connections and does whatever it wants with it. Congress terminated tribal status for more than 100 tribes. Basically said, you're not a tribe anymore and we're not going to pay attention to the treaties. The Supreme Court has held that when Congress breaches a treaty with an Indian tribe it's not judicially reviewable. It's called a political question.

I think if you look at yesterday's New York Times poll, particularly when you judge Democrats in Congress versus the Republicans in Congress, people put a little more faith, or even a little more than a little more faith in the Democrats in Congress.

The other General Welfare Clause is in the first of the authorities given to the Congress and it's not a grant, it's a restriction. By which I mean it doesn't say Congress can legislate for the general welfare, it means that everything Congress must do has to enhance the general welfare of the United States of America. It can't grant things to individuals, it can only legislate for the government.

Look. I have always rejected the argument that members of Congress cast their vote because they're Jewish or not Jewish. I didn't cast my vote as a Jewish member of Congress. I cast my vote as a member of Congress.

The Constitution, in addition to delegating certain enumerated powers to Congress, places whole areas outside the reach of Congress' regulatory authority. The First Amendment, for example, is fittingly celebrated for preventing Congress from "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion or "abridging the freedom of speech." The Second Amendment similarly appears to contain an express limitation on the government's authority.

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 best viewed from a distance—the farther the better—because up close, it is truly ugly. I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country.

In seeking the help of the Congress and our countrymen, I pledged no easy answers. I pledged, and asked, only toil and dedication. These the Congress and the people have given in good measure.

Congress, our leaders, voted against a proposal to have a national seven day waiting period to buy a gun. I don't want to sound like a Quaker, but when you think about it, is a week a long time to wait? To see if a former mental patient is qualified to own an Uzi? Con one, will ya Congress? It takes three weeks to get a phone!

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it. Dealing with Congress is a matter of give and take. The president doesn't get everything he wants, the Congress doesn't get everything they want. But we're finding good common ground.

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.

President Barack Obama couldn't bring everything into existence through Congress. Because from the day that he was elected president of the United States, the United States Congress, many of the Republicans met, and they declared that they would never allow his legislative program to succeed. And for eight years they fought him.

I'm thinking, That's Barack Obama. He doesn't go to work. He doesn't go down to Congress and make a deal. What the hell's he doing sitting in the White House? If I were in that job, I'd get down there and make a deal. Sure, Congress are lazy bastards, but so what? You're the top guy. You're the president of the company. It's your responsibility to make sure everybody does well. It's the same with every company in this country, whether it's a two-man company or a two-hundred-man company... . And that's the pussy generation - nobody wants to work.

We in Congress stand by Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.

Presidents have absolutely gone against the will of Congress. Congress hasn't declared a war since December 7, 1941, and yet we've been at war ever since with somebody or other in order to justify the war machine. Now we have alienated almost the entire earth

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

If the president is the head of the American body politic, Congress is its gastrointestinal tract. Its vast and convoluted inner workings may be mysterious and unpleasant, but in the end they excrete a great deal of material whose successful passage is crucial to our nation's survival. This is Congress's duty.

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?

For decades, people right, left, and center complained that the presidency is too powerful. Trump's administration is shrinking the presidency. The president has less and less influence over Congress. This president is not fulfilling the usual role of the president in being the moral leader and the spokesman for the country. He's just not being looked to for leadership.

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.

Last year, Congress passed a law that directs the Federal Reserve to set limits on debit card swipe fees that are reasonable and proportional to the cost of processing those transactions. Like most Americans, I had no idea that swipe fees charged to American businesses are the highest in the world.

Congress will pass a law restricting public comment on the Internet to individuals who have spent a minimum of one hour actually accomplishing a specific task while on line.

Congress suffers a great deal of criticism for its partisan acrimony. But while we may disagree politically, and air our opposition in this chamber, it is the conversation behind the scenes that cements and defines our relationships.

I mean to say that Congress can hereafter decide whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted.

The Parliament in Canada and the Congress in Washington do not have the authority to revoke the commandments of God, or to modify or amend them in any way.

Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress.

Congress is my ideological home; I come from a Nehruvian family.

The universe is holding congress with itself.

...Senate Doc. # 259. The 65th congress(:)...The coal companies made between 100% and 7,856% on their capital stock during the war (to end all wars, WWI). ...The leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of saddles for the calvary. But there wasn't any calvary overseas!

It is provided by the Constitution that the President shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

In a body [like Congress] where there are more than one hundred talking lawyers, you can make no calculation upon the termination of any debate.

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 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.

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.

The New World Order run by the United Nations ain't gonna happen. Because they've shown their hand, and at least some corner of Congress and the American people are awake to it: they've blown it all.

Pigs are smarter than dogs, and both are smarter than Congress.

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

There is not a subject in which I take a deeper interest than I do in the development of Alaska, and I propose, if Congress will follow by recommendations, to do something in that territory that will make it move on.

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.

We must start now to provide additional stimulus to the modernization of American industrial plants I shall propose to the Congress a new tax incentive for businesses to expand their normal investment in plant and equipment.

I believe that Congress will and must act before then to renew its objections to multiple and discriminatory taxes on the Internet, as well as to taxes that inhibit Internet access.

Soldiers join the military to serve their country, but when bullets are flying, it's hard to fight for an abstract notion like patriotism. They're fighting for the people standing next to them, and it doesn't matter who's a Republican or a Democrat, or who's black or white or Christian or Muslim or gay or straight. If Congress and all Americans could manage to ignore those differences, we would have a perfect country, but somehow we cannot rise to that level of nobility.

Most Americans are more concerned about the economy and job creation. And they can't understand why the Obama administration or the Democrat majority in Congress wants to pass a bill like the cap-and-trade tax that will cost us jobs, that will hurt our economy, that will drive up costs for families, as well as for small businesses.

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.

So the villains aren't gay-hating Islamists or women killing tyrants, but actually us: an American Congress bent on the apocalypse. Don't we understand? Iranians love their children too.

That's one of the major lessons: no president should ever take this nation to war without full public debate in the Congress and/or in the public.

Congress needs strong parties, but it also needs the capacity to deal with budget and entitlement challenges that are likely beyond the reach of pure partisan exertion.

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.