Quotes About Congress

Well, Harry Reid and other members of congress, they're just furious over this Olympic uniform deal. He says we should burn the uniforms, and it's an embarrassment and a disgrace. Not as embarrassing as congress constantly borrowing money from the Chinese, but still embarrassing.

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.

When the Congress first met, Mr. Cushing made a motion that it should be opened with prayer . . . Mr. Samuel Adams arose and said he was no bigot, and could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue, who was at the same time a friend to his country. He . . . had heard that Mr. Duche . . . deserved that character and therefore he moved that Mr. Duche . . . might be desired to read prayers to the Congress . . . . After (he read several prayers), Mr. Duche, unexpected to everybody, struck out into an extemporary prayer, which filled the bosom of every man present.

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.

If we were living back in 1789, your musket would be really useful in a military conflict. If you were called up to service, they said bring your musket. And indeed, the First Congress passed a law. You want to know the first gun control law in America? First Congress passed a law mandating that all able-bodied men must own a musket.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While General Howe with a Large Armament is advancing towards New York, our Congress resolved to Declare the United Colonies free and Independent States. A Declaration for this Purpose, I expect, will this day pass Congress...It is gone so far that we must now be a free independent State, or a Conquered Country.

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling appeared before Congress. Do you think they even bothered swearing him in? Now he is denying he lied to Congress last week. He's saying it was just the liquor talking.

The American people want jobs and economic growth. Congress is doing nothing to provide that. The American people want their constitutional liberties protected. Congress is doing nothing to provide that.

Yes, [I am accusing the CIA of] misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am.

Most of us complain about Congress. We say it's a place that doesn't reflect us; they don't listen to us. Actually, Congress well reflects the American people. It gives us exactly what we ask for.

Now, six months after he sent the military back into combat to take on the terror group calling itself the Islamic State, Mr. Obama has acquiesced and sent a measure to Congress asking it to formally authorize what he has been doing all along. And now that they have gotten what they asked for, few in Congress seem all that enthusiastic about the prospect.

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.

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?

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.

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

Amendments occupy a great deal of most legislators' time, particularly those lawmakers in the minority. Members of Congress do author major bills, but more commonly they make minor adjustments to the bigger bill.

I worked when I was Congress on a second chance act. We have got to do a better job recognizing and correcting the errors in the system that do reflect on institutional bias in criminal justice. But what - what - what Donald Trump and I are saying is let's not have the reflex of assuming the worst of men and women in law enforcement. We truly do believe that law enforcement is not a force for racism or division in our country.

I have observed in my 30 years in Washington that when a President initiates a major policy speech on a controversial issue while Congress is in recess, it usually is because what he is advocating is indefensible and that he is seeking to minimize criticism.

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 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.

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.

Was the Vietnam conflict a war which should have, as a matter of constitutional law, required a declaration of war by Congress?

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

The right of petition, I have said, was not conferred on the People by the Constitution, but was a pre-existing right, reserved by the People out of the grants of power made to Congress.

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

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.

Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress.

If Obamacare is allowed to stand - and Congress is allowed to make the purchase of government-endorsed health insurance compulsory - there will be no meaningful limit on Washington's reach into the lives of the American people. That is certainly not what the Founders intended.

I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you're a Democrat. Sometimes that's good, obviously, and sometimes that's obviously bad. But in the news business, there's no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news.

During President George W. Bush's two terms, you couldn't drive far without seeing a particular bumper sticker: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Now that Democrats control the White House and Congress, the left treats dissent as the lowest form of treason.

I would never want to see myself viewed as beating the drums of war, ... but I would rather live with that image than look into the mirror and see a member of Congress who failed to do his duty.

I believe that Congress will and must act before then to renew its objections to multiple and discriminatory taxes on the Internet, as well as to taxes that inhibit Internet access.

Congress has no power to make any religious establishments.

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

Earth Day gathered up those strands, and dozens more, and knitted them together in the public consciousness as "environmental" issues. The nation was pretty startled when 20 million people hit the streets. Congress, which had adjourned for the day to go back to its districts, was blown away.

In seven years, we'll have the highest percentage of Americans non-native born since the founding of the republic. And some people think, "Well, we've always had these numbers." But it's not so. This is very unusual. It's a radical change. And in fact, when the numbers reached about this high in 1924, the president and Congress changed the policy, and it slowed down immigration significantly. And we then assimilated through the 1965 and created really the solid middle class of America, with assimilated immigrants, and it was good for America.

Every citizen of this country should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth, their vote has a much weight as that of any CEO, any member of Congress, or any President.

Well, I think the best thing we can do for the short term is move good energy legislation through to the Congress; I'm encouraged that there's some prospect for that now.

The slave power dares anything, and it can be conquered only by the united masses of the people. From Congress to the people, I appeal.

There's not an appropriations bill in the last 10 years that the-that Democrats passed in the Congress. We haven't spent any money of your taxes in the last decade.

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.

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.

Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay