Quotes About Congress

The money problem facing the country from 1789 to 1896 existed because Congress never exercised is authority to "coin money or regulate the value thereof" - but rather delegated that authority, sometimes by charter and sometimes by default, to the banking system. This despite the provision in the Constitution that charged Congress with the power to 'coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standards of weight and Measures.'

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.

I went to Congress to change the policies of our country. I did not go to change the behaviors of members of Congress.

Congress is furious at the Secret Service for consorting with hookers, which has traditionally been Congress's role.

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.

For Members of Congress, we are saying here on the Democratic side of the aisle we are not going to vote for another pay increase for Members of Congress until the American people get an increase.

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

In order to do vigorous oversight, the leadership of the intelligence community has got to be straight with the American people and straight with the Congress. For there to be vigorous oversight, the intelligence community's got to be straight with the American people and the Congress and that has not been the case.

It's far from clear in general that Donald Trump is a guy who really thinks about the details of policy and is going to do the kind of heavy lifting you have to do as president to get those policies through in Congress. I think the hope is that Paul Ryan and his crew will push policies through Congress and Trump will just sign them. That's not really how policy works.

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.

I can't think of any decision where the entire Congress immediately rushes to condemn a decision by the court. It's getting to be election time and this gives everyone in Congress a chance to prove they are patriotic.

Most US presidents since World War II have led military actions without a declaration of war by Congress, though most, if not all, have properly consulted and sought support from Congress. That is the wise thing to do.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

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.

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.

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.

As a Member of Congress, I've continued my family's tradition of focusing on education.

If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.

The American people expect more from Congress. They expect fiscal responsibility and common sense. They expect us to return to the pay-as-you-go budget rules that we had enacted in the past that helped us establish a surplus, however briefly.

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.

I've been talking to people all over the country, city council members, grassroots leaders, party leaders, members in Congress - and you know what? The truth is I'll have something to say real soon.

It's August, which means Congress is on recess and Mitch McConnell has shimmied back into the ocean to seek a mate.

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?

I had taken on the color of the climate around me and had driven back all the emotion that rose from the Brooklyn streets so that I could belong to the exclusive club of Congress.

Congress, the legislative stone in America's urethra.

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.

Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street are owned by the Zionists.

Well, it looks like John Boehner will be the new Speaker of the House. He is the son of a bartender, one of 12 children. He grew up in a two room home with just one bathroom, worked his way through school, became the first person in his family to graduate from college. And, sadly, fell in with the wrong crowd and wound up in Congress.

Elect me to office. I will protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. Because there's no constitutional authority for Congress spending on the objects of benevolence, don't expect for me to vote for prescription drugs for the elderly, handouts to farmers and food stamps for the poor. Instead, I'll fight these and other unconstitutional congressional expenditures”? I'll tell you how many votes he'll get: It will be Williams' vote, and that's it.

Americans want to have what members of Congress have: guaranteed health coverage.

And I am saying, how about the other two branches? And putting the pressure on our representatives in the Senate and the Congress, and the court system. They should be counter-acting this corruption, but they are sitting there silent.

The American people in Congress have got to ask themselves a very simple question. Why are we the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a right?

America going into this huge, costly, never-ending war created huge debt, which became a huge problem in Congress and led to it stalling many times, putting a halt to different kinds of social progress.

Listen, we all have to agree that there is too much litigation going on in this world. But every year it seems to multiply tenfold. Why can't we stop it? Well, it's because the lawmakers in Congress and the Senate are almost all lawyers, too!

We cannot make the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States someone who has risked America's secrets and lied about this to Congress and the American people about it day after day after day.

If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.

I mean, look, Nancy Pelosi said in the very beginning this is going to be the most open, honest and ethical Congress in history. And what we're seeing is she's breaking that promise every day.

What I find is most people have a civics book understanding for how Congress works and how a bill moves.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

Well, my wife, Cathy Gillespie, worked for Joe Barton, who was running for Congress in 1984.

If you want to right-size executive power relative to the other branches of government, the best way to do that is to have a healthy Congress in which the two parties are debating, disagreeing, but also occasionally working together to pass legislation.

For better or worse, editing is what editors are for; and editing is selection and choice of material. That editors newspaper or broadcast can and do abuse this power is beyond doubt, but that is no reason to deny the discretion Congress provided.

President Obama said he is going to use the Gulf disaster to push a new energy bill through Congress. How about using the Gulf disaster to fix the Gulf disaster?

President Obama signed a bill preventing members of Congress from profiting from insider trading. Didn't you think that was already illegal?

Disease, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake, I'd accept with some despair, but no, you sent us Congress! Good God, Sir, was that fair?

We passed law that encouraged consumption through different purchasing habits like, you know, hybrid vehicles. You buy hybrid, you get a tax credit. We've encouraged the spread of ethanol as an alternative to crude oil. We have asked for Congress to pass regulatory relief so we can build more refineries to increase the supply of gasoline, hopefully taking the pressure off of price. And so the strategy is to recognize that dependency upon crude oil, in a global market, affects us economically here at home. And, therefore, we need to diversify away as quickly as possible.

One third of the $15 trillion of mortgages in existence in 2008 are owned, or securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Housing and the Veterans Administration. Wall Street buyers of repackaged loans didn't mind buying risky paper because they assumed that they would be guaranteed by the federal government: read bailout from the taxpayers. Today's housing mess can be laid directly at the feet of Congress and the White House.

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.