Quotes About 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.

It's politically impossible, as you know, for any member of Congress to make a public statement condemning or criticizing the policies of Israel. It would be political suicidal for them to do so. A lot of the members of Congress agree with me, some very high up in the Congress. But if they came out publically and said it, their seats would be in danger.

Well, Congress gave us a billion dollars to dig the hole, this gigantic hole. Bigger, much bigger than the hole in Geneva, Switzerland. Then they canceled the machine and gave us a second billion dollars to fill up the hole. Two billion dollars to dig a hole and fill it up. That is the wisdom of the United States Congress and it really makes you wonder: Is there intelligent life on the Earth? Certainly not in the United States Congress.

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress - not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment. Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them.

I'm sick of these congress meetings. There no reason to meet again. As you know, if there's a congress, I usually win it.

Let me make it clear that I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won. But during the Administration of the present President we have had neither agreement nor a clear-cut battle.

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.

It is almost impossible for anyone outside this damn beltway to really understand how the Congress works. If you aren't here, walking the halls of Congress, sitting at bars and attending parties where you get to knock back some brews with Hill staffers, you don't have a handle on the almost numbing amount of bullshit that goes on.

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?

For decades, people right, left, and center complained that the presidency is too powerful. Trump's administration is shrinking the presidency. The president has less and less influence over Congress. This president is not fulfilling the usual role of the president in being the moral leader and the spokesman for the country. He's just not being looked to for leadership.

It is difficult to get Latina and Asian women to speak out. We must make it clear it's not their problem, it's our problem. We need magazines like this one to keep talking about the issue. And know that we women in Congress are with you 100 percent.

The Declaration [of Independence] was a committee report, and [Tomas] Jefferson was simply the draftsman. [John] Adams's crucial role in bringing about independence in the Continental Congress has tended to get forgotten.

I've often thought that the process of aging could be slowed down if it had to go through Congress.

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.

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.

Congress should stop treating veterans like they're asking for a hand out when it comes to the benefits they were promised, and they should realize that, were it not for these veterans, there would be nothing to hand out.

"Benghazi happened a long time ago. We are unaware of any agency blocking an employee who would like to appear before Congress to provide information related to Benghazi." This is the modus operandi of the regime - any Democrat regime, actually. You stonewall it for a few months, and then after a few months go by you say, "It's an old story." Didn't Watergate happen a long time ago? It still seems to be really relevant, Watergate.

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.

The 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.

There are 435 members of Congress. There's one 'Morning Joe' show. Hopefully, we can keep hammering the argument that you can disagree with other people and have debates but remain civil.

Aren't we supposed to believe that if you are an elected official, if you serve in Congress, you are representing all the people of your district not just the people who voted for you, not [just] the people who you agree with?

But, you know, there's another group that really runs the show. It's very shadowy, just as you've described... Those of us in the Congress of the United States are window dressing.

I've learned the importance of changing people's minds at the grassroots level so that whoever does run will have a much better chance of encountering public opinion that reaches a critical mass and brings about a change not only in White House policies but in the Congress and in the state legislatures and all around the world.

Many hard comments have been made on my efforts in India from the side of the Congress party, yet I feel content in the deep conviction that the offer I traveled 22,000 miles to discuss with Indian leaders was a real contribution to a solution of our differences.

If a trip is worth taking, members of Congress should be prepared to justify paying for it out of their office accounts.

Why would I want to run for Congress and continue to get tainted with all the things that people get tainted with as they come along the system.

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

Virginia and Maryland attorneys argued this is a national problem and needs a national solution. I'm hoping that with a federal court agreeing this is inequitable, Congress will now act and do the right thing for the District.

The most significant impact is what it does in terms of the integrity of the legislative process and the executive process, as opposed to what it does for campaigns. But to remove this unheard of process in the 1990s, where members of Congress are being pushed and shoved every Tuesday to ask for $100,000, $500,000, a million dollars from corporations, unions, and individuals, this was never allowed in American history.

Soldiers join the military to serve their country, but when bullets are flying, it's hard to fight for an abstract notion like patriotism. They're fighting for the people standing next to them, and it doesn't matter who's a Republican or a Democrat, or who's black or white or Christian or Muslim or gay or straight. If Congress and all Americans could manage to ignore those differences, we would have a perfect country, but somehow we cannot rise to that level of nobility.

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!

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.

What I find is most people have a civics book understanding for how Congress works and how a bill moves.

Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.

Congress-these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage.

President Obama said he is going to use the Gulf disaster to push a new energy bill through Congress. How about using the Gulf disaster to fix the Gulf disaster?

Parts of the Voting Rights Act are due to expire next year if Congress doesn't extend them, including the section that guarantees that voting rights will be protected by the federal government.

If we want to preserve our liberty, it is up to us to know what is going on, to know the Constitution, to know these limitation on the power of Congress and to insist that our leaders obey.

I think that the responsibility that the Democrats had may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress, or by me when I was President, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The centralization of power in Washington, which nearly all members of Congress deplore in their speech and then support by their votes, steadily increases.

When I came into the job, funding for the humanities at the federal level was being drastically cut. This was the high tide of the new Republican Congress.

Yet the whole preamble of the second authorization act for the Marshall Plan showed the direction Congress was ready to take about breaking down barriers within Europe.

President Bush will go down in history as the torture president. He has now defied a majority of Congress to allow the use of interrogation techniques that any reasonable observer would call torture.

So our focus has to be on the things that we can control, which is to take the necessary measures working with Congress to ensure that our economy grows, that we create jobs.

The problem is, is that President Bush and the Republican leadership in the Congress have resisted attempts to increase dramatically our fuel economy standards over the last five years.

The theory is that election to Congress is tantamount to being dispatched to Washington on a looting raid for the enrichment of your state or district, and no other ethic need inhibit the feeding frenzy.

I hope to see the bringing together of all the best educated people of the earth into a worldwide Congress of Scientists.

Well, as a former small businessperson - I understand what's going on, I think in the business community. And businesspeople around the country are looking at all the spending and all the debt. They're looking at all the policies coming out of this Congress and this administration the last two years, and they - it's created all this uncertainty.