Quotes About Congress

Normally what happens in a new presidency is the president has a big agenda, and Congress is full of people with human weaknesses. And so the president indulges the human weaknesses of members of Congress in order to pass his agenda. This time it's the other way around. Donald Trump does not have much of an agenda. Congress burns with this intense Republican agenda and so does Congress that has to put up with the human weaknesses of the president in order to get a signature on the things it desperately wants to pass.

We have the Israelis coming to us for equipment. We can say we can't possibly get the Congress to support a program like this. And they say don't worry about the Congress. We will take care of the Congress. This is somebody from another country, but they can do it. They own, you know, the banks in this country. The newspapers. Just look at where the Jewish money is.

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.

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.

Congress doesn't hate Congress.

Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defense, the militia, is put in the hands of Congress? Of what service would militia be to you when, most probably, you will not have a single musket in the state? For, as arms are to be provided by Congress, they may or may not provide them.

Secularism for the Congress is merely a slogan while for the BJP it is an article of faith. Secularism is about votebank politics for the Congress, while it is about 'India first' for the BJP.

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.

We want this - and I - we hope that right when they come back, that the Congress passes the Lilly Ledbetter Act which would correct the Supreme Court decision that was just recent that essentially guts wage discrimination law. It's been in place for years. It was gutted by this Roberts Court. We want it to be reversed by legislation. We hope that Congress passes it and that is on the desk for [Barack] Obama to sign as one of his first acts once he's sworn in. So it - I could go on, we have quite a well-developed list.

I am going to work with people who hold similar views to me inside Congress, outside of Congress to make certain that we come together to stop Trump from doing some of the very ugly things that he has talked about doing.

A new Republican Congress is taking over. Sen. Ted Cruz has been appointed tooverseeing NASA in Congress. He says he wants NASA to focus on finding aliens so he can deport them.

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

I was very, very concerned about President Obama and how much executive order and how much executive power he tried to exert. But I think I want to be, and I think congress will be, a check on any executive, Republican or Democrat, that tries to grasp too much power. And really, a lot of the fault is not only presidents trying to take too much power, it's Congress giving up too much power.

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 Obama is asking Congress to support a military strike in Syria. If they approve, it will be the first time Congress has officially declared war since Obamacare.

Most Americans, who think Congress has a right to do anything for which they can get a majority vote, ignore the clearly written constitutional restraints on Congress.

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.

No subject was more important in the 2014 elections than healthcare, and Republicans in Congress should waste no time in taking decisive action in response to the voters'€™ demands. Obamacare has escalated costs, disrupted coverage, and introduced bad incentives throughout our healthcare system. Congress must repeal Obamacare and send the president a replacement package of reforms that protects freedom and focuses on the real problem with American healthcare -€” affordability.

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.

I don't want to make a member of Congress do something that that member of Congress's constituents would not approve of, or would not agree to. So in that regard, I'm kind of the opposite of a lobbyist.

The day after Republicans won solid majorities in the House and Senate, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader-to-be Mitch McConnell outlined priorities for the newly elected Congress. High on the list is fundamental tax reform. In addition to overhauling the federal tax code, however, Congress should rein in the Internal Revenue Service.

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?

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.

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.

President Obama has repeatedly urged Congress to let the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning more than $250,000 a year. Increasing rates on top earners is an obvious way to raise revenue from those who can afford it most.

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.

The universe is holding congress with itself.

When I started working, women were working at 59 cents to the dollar. We got a raise, but it's still unfair. We're still 16 percent of Congress, even though we're 51 percent of the population. We're a low percentage of our CEOs. We're a low percentage of boards and being part of boards.

As a Member of Congress from one of the fastest growing States in the country, we hire close to 2,500 new teachers a year, close to 5,000 support staff and faculty.

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.

OK, so this pack - tax package includes about 50 tax breaks. None of them are new. They were all existing tax breaks. What this did was make them permanent. It gives some certainty for people when they're filing taxes that they don't have to wonder if Congress is going to renew them year after year.

The Middle East is literally going up in flames, as is California, and Katrina's problems haven't been solved, and Congress' response is to criticize Federal judges.

Man-made global warming was a potential serious threat, and NASA wanted Congress to fund new satellites to study the problem. It was a team effort to get that accomplished.

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

The 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.

JFK [John F. Kennedy] was young, glamorous, Camelot, funny, engaging. Congress loved him.

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.

Republicans have reached out so much to black Republicans because it's part of our tradition. Blacks have been in this nation longer than most other Americans with the possible exception of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The first blacks in Congress and the first black Governor were all Republicans. It was Republicans who fought the Civil War over slavery and who introduced the Civil Rights legislation over the next hundred years.

When I testified in front of Congress, I know that I was testifying under oath and I told the truth.

I believe in the absolute separation of church and state and in the strict enforcement of the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

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?

In 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.

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.

The argument has been made in Congress that it is slippery slope if you allow therapeutic, what people people are calling therapeutic cloning, then you will get reproductive cloning.

When will the men do something besides extend congratulations? I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress infavor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly!

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!

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.