Quotes About Congress

You need to fight cases in the courts, but you certainly cannot rely on the courts, you need to testify in Congress and lobby your Congress person, but you certainly cannot rely on Congress. You need to speak out in the media, but you cannot totally trust the media either. You need to work within the academy because that's an influential opinion body. I think that one of the lessons that people have learned in the civil rights community is that it is generally not enough to focus on litigation in the courts.

The IRS takes your money. Congress uses our money to arm our enemies. The IRS takes more of your money. Congress uses that money to fight the enemies Congress just armed.

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.

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.

We need less travelling by jet plaes from congress to congress... but more kneeling and praying and pleading to God to have mercy on us, more crying to God to arise and scatter his enemies and make himself known.

I 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.

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.

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.

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

The bottom line is that every single member of Congress has to get voted into office every two or six years. That means they need to look really good in their home district and state. That means good local press. That means people in their district thinking, "Man, I really don't like Congress, but I like Senator Bob."

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.

Remember we had two Democratic houses of Congress along with the [Barack] Obama administration that laid out those policies before they lost Congress because people were very disappointed in what the Obama administration did - bailing out Wall Street instead of bailing out Main Street. So as someone who follows the climate very closely, there's no question that "all of the above" has been an absolute disaster.

Congress has created and funded a huge peacetime military that has substantial abilities to wage offensive operations, and it has not placed restrictions on the use of that military or the funds to support it, because it would rather let the president take the political risks in deciding on war. If Congress wanted to play a role in restricting war, it could - it simply does not want to. But we should not mistake a failure of political will for a violation of the Constitution.

The voters in my district, and around the country, have demanded that Congress get a hold on the influx of illegal immigrants and tighten the security around our borders.

It is plain that, when it comes to inferior officers, Congress itself can pass a law sending these nominees to the President with him having the authority to put them on the bench without the advice and consent of the Senate.

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.

A republican stands up in congress and says 'I GOT A REALLY BAD IDEA!!' and the democrat stands up after him and says 'AND I CAN MAKE IT SHITTIER!!

A majority of senators should be able to adopt rules at the beginning of each Congress.

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

Congressional 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.

The 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.

The 20th of March in 1964, I went before the Secretary of State to qualify to run as an official candidate for Congress from the 2nd Congressional District, and it was easier for me to qualify to run than it was for me to pass the literacy test to be a registered voter. And we had four people to qualify and run in the June primary election be we didn't have enough Negroes registered in Mississippi.

Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, of course, lays out the delegated, enumerated, and therefore limited powers of Congress. Only through a deliberate misreading of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution has the federal government been allowed to overreach its authority and extend its tendrils into every corner of civil society.

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.

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.

I wonder much that a court of Law should be in doubt whether a Resolution of Congress can superceed the Law of a Sovereign State.

The Congress has historically played covert communal politics in order to create what in India we call vote banks where you pit one community against another and so on in order to secure votes.

Unfortunately there are too many examples of members of Congress and other elected officials using language, referring to your opponents in ways that you would have never done before, ascribing the worst motives to your opponents, and assuming that other Americans are the enemies. And that's just not the way it used to be. And I don't think it can be that way in the future.

Uncertainty hurts business. It annoys individuals. Why keep the whole country, including business and individuals, in uncertainty over the extent of the tax burdens to be placed upon us? How many of those who voted for Calvin Coolidge imagined for a moment that would do nothing to bring about tax relief before 1926?.... But if the Administration persists in opposing a special session then it will inevitably be 1926 before action is taken.... Coolidge and Congress should ease our minds and grease our activities by reforming and reducing taxation as soon as feasible after March 4.

When congress is in session no American is safe.

In explaining the Constitution, James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 45: 'The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peach, negotiation, and foreign commerce.' Has the Constitution been amended to permit Congress to tax, spend and regulate as it pleases or have Americans said, 'To hell with the Constitution'?

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.

The Congress fights not with violent but with nonviolent means, however imperfect, however crude the nonviolence may be.

We cut tax exemptions in 1986, it was the most admired tax reform in U.S. history. Congress and the president worked together then to eliminate scores of loopholes and exemptions and deductions; this made taxes much simpler, and allowed a major cut in tax rates.

Essentially, how do you go after [Donald] Trump to have a real shot of taking back control of Congress in 2018? Democrats will need to energize not only their base, but also pick up actual swing voters who could be turned off from President Trump.

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.

It (Congress) is a funny party. It is the largest political organization in the world but perhaps does not have a single rule or regulation. We create new rules every two minutes and then dump them. Nobody knows the rules in the party

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.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

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.

We recognize the force of the argument that the effects of war under modern conditions may be felt in the economy for years and years, and that if the war power can be used in days of peace to treat all the wounds which war inflicts on our society, it may not only swallow up all other powers of Congress but largely obliterate the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments as well.

Some fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.

The 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.

The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

It was declared by Congress that marijuana makes people insane. But . . . lawyers, defense lawyers, got the idea, OK, I can use this for an insanity defense.

Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.

Article 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.

I think what you've got are millions of people who are in trouble today. They really are. They're confused. They're working longer hours for lower wages. They're seeing productivity going up but their kids are worse off economically than they are. They're looking at a campaign finance system in politics and they see corruption, big money buying elections. Nobody in Congress is listening to them.