Quotes About Congress

Congress needs to step up. Congress needs to do their job, and Congress needs to do their job now.

In foreign affairs, the president can do what he wants unless Congress says no. In domestic policy, the president can't do anything unless Congress says yes.

The court follows elite opinion, not public opinion. And Democratic leaders in Congress and Republican leaders in Congress follow elite opinion as well. It's what I've called "the Washington cartel." It's career politicians in both parties. It is lobbyists and giant corporations.

One time, the Library of Congress was giving books to local libraries around the country on Islam. The library of a guy named Walter Jones, who's a member of Congress from North Carolina, got some books and resource materials, and he got up in the press and said he didn't want any Muslim books in the library. And the people said, "Wait a minute, that's kind of anti-Muslim." He said, "Oh no, Keith Ellison is a friend of mine." And I said, "You know what? We are friends, but you're wrong about this.

I think that the most exciting thing is to find a tool, like an art, with an opportunity to share. Real roots come from everywhere in the world. Why call is congress? Because it is a congress.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress- lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!

I don't think we can depend on Congress. In the American political system - we have been brought up to believe that the American political system works beautifully; it is democratic; Congress represents us; the President is elected, he represents us - it doesn't work that way.

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.

If I were in Congress in 1996, I would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which used Congress's constitutional authority to define what official state documents other states have to recognize under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to ensure that no state would be forced to recognize a 'same sex' marriage license issued in another state.

The president is eager to get to work and looks forward to working with the new Congress on policies that will make sure middle-class Americans are sharing in the economic recovery, but the president is clear that he will not let this Congress undo important protections gained -- particularly in areas of health care, Wall Street reform and the environment.

I doubt that I am the first member of Congress to tell off a reporter, and I am sure I won't be the last.

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.

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

Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.

My career in Congress is a story of before Sandy Hook and after Sandy Hook.

This is what class warfare looks like: The Business Roundtable - representing Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and others - has called on Congress to raise the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to 70, cut Social Security and veterans' COLAs, raise taxes on working families and cut taxes for the largest corporations in America.

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.

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.

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.

In 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.

The failure of the White House and Congress to seriously address the nation's fiscal situation is certain to broaden the belief among many voters that the U.S. political system is broken.

I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book. If your name is in the Library of Congress, you're immortal.

Obamacare is the nation's biggest job killer and stands in the way of our country's economic growth and prosperity. It should be defunded and repealed. President Obama should hear the pleas from the untold number of Americans who are losing their jobs, wages, and healthcare plans, and Congress should act immediately to stop Obamacare from inflicting any more damage on the country on our hard-working citizens.

That's what mayors do. They lobby Congress to provide resources for their city.

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

When the ACLU took my case and we got a ruling I think, for the first time, they could - the Congress could put out the report internally but they couldn't put it out at taxpayers' expense around the country. And I felt odd about that because I, in a way, I was interfering with free speech, but then, you can't always win.

It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation's foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action.

We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in 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.

Back in the mid-1980s, congressional hearings were held after we brought this litigation, and held up the first experiment. At that time, I went in front of Congress, along with the major agencies involved with this.

Write letters to your editors, write to your members of Congress, and write to your news stations.

No power but Congress can declare war; but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war? ... [T]hese remarks originate purely in a desire to maintain the powers of government as they are established by the Constitution between the different departments, and hope that, whether we have conquests or no conquests, war or no war, peace or no peace, we shall yet preserve, in its integrity and strength, the Constitution of the United States.

When this president was sworn into office, he was handed a deficit of over a trillion dollars. Republicans were in control of Congress for much of the time that President George W. Bush was in office, and they didn't do a great job of controlling spending.

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?

It's so worth-while being a judge, because, if I make good, I can help prove that a woman's place is as much on the bench, in City Council, or in Congress, as in the home.

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.

I don't understand why every single person in Congress isn't standing up and going, "He [Donald Trump] is in bed with Russia." And then they could just lock their arms and not let him in.

Hillary [Clinton] bleached and deleted 33,000 e-mails after a congressional subpoena. She got a subpoena from Congress and she said, this is no good, this is terrible, because those 33,000 e-mails had bad stuff.

If Congress doesn't raise taxes, you cannot get a private investment account without forgoing a portion, possibly all, of your guaranteed benefit check.

Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.

One poll showed that Americans have a higher opinion of witches, the IRS and hemorrhoids than Congress

I believe that the Constitution is not hostile to the idea that national problems can be solved at the national level through the cooperative efforts of the three coequal branches of government, the Congress, the executive and courts. But not every president, not every legislator and not every judge agrees that the federal government has the power to address and to try to remedy the twin national problems of poverty and access to equal opportunity.