Popular quotes about Congress! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 28
If congress refuses to obey its own rules. If congress refuses to pass a balanced budget. If congress refuses to read the Bills. Then I say, sweep the place clean, limit their terms, and send them HOME!
Rand PaulThou shalt not steal unless thou hast a majority vote in Congress.... I'm healthy; subsidized prescription drugs won't do me much good. I'd be willing to forego my prescription drugs if Congress would force some young American to mow my lawn.
Walter E. WilliamsOverreaction is one of the things that congress specializes in. I can't think of anything congress does better than overreact.
Fred BarnesI can't imagine that I would be asked that by the president-elect [Donald Trump], or then-president [Barack Obama]. But it's - I'm very clear. I voted for the change that put the Army Field Manual in place as a member of Congress. I understand that law very, very quickly and am also deeply aware that any changes to that will come through Congress and the president.
James MattisFor the first time in history, Congress has 100 women in it. Congratulations. Welcome to modern times, America. It's great having 100 women in Congress. Unless you're in line for the congressional bathroom.
Craig FergusonThe difference between the more traditional sports clubs and Congress is that Congress doesn't really compete against another team.
Cal ThomasPresident 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.
Louis FarrakhanThe 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.
Josh MarshallMost 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.
Donald RumsfeldThe government needs to help those in need, but members of Congress shouldn't take advantage of the situation and use a national tragedy as an opportunity to spend taxpayer dollars on their pet projects.
Chris ChocolaBy 1990, the EPA had tallied up 32,645 sites of past chemical waste dumping in need of cleanup. Some of these are actual waste landfills, but many are former manufacturing sites where drums full of chemicals have been simply abandoned. The names of the most notorious appear on the EPS's National Priorities List. These are the so-called Superfund sites, names for the super fund of money put together by Congress in 1980 to clean them up. In 2009, the Superfund list contained 1,331 sites.
Sandra SteingraberI came to the conclusion months ago, and I said it to members of Congress, that the only way people are going to fully appreciate what this reform is if we pass it and implement it and it becomes not a caricature but a reality, and I still believe that. So I think it will be easier to sell it moving forward than it was to this point.
David AxelrodCongressional mistakes have dramatically increased immigration through a series of what I believe were ill-advised actions going back to 1965 when the basic notions of our immigration laws were revised. In 1990, Congress opened the floodgates by passing a 35-percent increase in legal immigration.
Ronald ReaganThe notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left.
Robert BorkThe urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to parliament [or congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever.
Auberon WaughI'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.
Keith EllisonWas the Vietnam conflict a war which should have, as a matter of constitutional law, required a declaration of war by Congress?
Arlen SpecterSince September 11th Congress has created the Department of Homeland Security, more than doubled the homeland security budget and implemented a bipartisan overhaul of our intelligence systems.
Doc Hastings[Barack] Obama was reaching a point [with Syria bombing] where he might not have been able to carry it off.He was losing support internally, and was compelled to send the vote to Congress, and it looked as if he was going to be defeated, which would have been a very serious blow to his presidency, to his authority.
Noam ChomskyIn this time of challenge, I am asking the prime minister to address Congress on the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.
John BoehnerThe 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.
Calvin CoolidgeThe 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.
Michael MoriartyThe immigration bill - the new immigration bill - [Bill Clinton] has stripped the courts, which Congress can do under the leadership of the president, so that people who had a right to asylum or to petition - for asylum who were legal residents are now unable to go through because that part of the bill has been taken out.
Nat HentoffUtah could elect its first black Republican woman to Congress. In other words, Utah finally got one black person and the first thing they want to do is send her to Washington.
Conan O'BrienWe 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.
Ronald ReaganMost of the men and women who vote in Congress each year to continue subsidies have taken campaign donations from big energy companies.
Bill McKibbenREAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.
Ambrose BierceA more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality.
John Kenneth GalbraithThe bigger issue is that we're communicating directly with voters [during the president campaign]. For those members of congress that endorse us, terrific, for those that don't, we're still winning voters in their state.
Kellyanne ConwayIn the very next election, the American people elected 63 new Republicans to the House of Representatives - the largest sweep of Congress for any party since 1948. Even liberal Massachusetts elected a Republican senator solely because of his vow to vote against Obamacare.
Ann CoulterI 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.
Allen WestA couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congressโs generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
Mike LofgrenThereโs a need to perfect things in a writersโ room, and that can take a lot of fun out of a show sometimes. Itโs a struggle. It depends on your personality. Some people love working with a writing staff. I had a great writing staff on Lucky Louie, but it sometimes felt like Congress or something.
Louis C. K.Deficits, as I've often said, aren't caused by too little taxing, they're caused by too much spending. Presidents can't appropriate a dollar of tax payers money, only Congressmen can; and Congress is susceptible to all sorts of influences that have nothing to do with good government.
Ronald ReaganThe intelligence community, for the most part, has no accountability at all; to the Congress, to us the American people, and so they feel that they above the law.
Gloria NaylorThe 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.
Jim ClyburnAt the very time that Congress is considering a Bush administration request to equip our troops in Iraq with vehicles that are more resistant to roadside bombs, its leadership is fighting for a proposal that would have the opposite effect on roads here at home: a measure sought by environmentalists that would force automakers to make vehicles sold domestically much lighter and, thus, more vulnerable in collisions.
Deneen BorelliPresident Obama's executive actions give work permits and federal entitlement benefits to people illegally in America - in direct violation of the laws passed by Congress. This undermines the entire constitutional system of government.
Donald TrumpArticle 1 Section 8 of the Constitution says Congress has the ability to coin money and regulate the currency and doesn't say anything about gold or silver.
Ron PaulIn early January I introduced my legislation, which, besides prohibiting Federal funding of human cloning, also expresses the sense of Congress that foreign nations should establish total prohibition on human cloning as well.
Cliff StearnsI meet with ambassadors from all countries in my role as a member of Congress, and you always have better relationships with those you actually personally get along with. That matters. So if there is chemistry between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, maybe that can bode for something.
Adam KinzingerIn the campaign back in 2007, 2008, people would say, "Oh, he's being naรฏve. He thinks that there's no red states and blue states. And wait 'til he gets here." And I will confess that, I didn't fully appreciate the ways in which individual senators or members of Congress now are pushed to the extremes by their voter bases. I did not expect, particularly in the midst of crisis, just how severe that partisanship would be.
Barack Obama