Quotes About Congress

Iran is a bad and dangerous actor in a volatile region of the world, which is why Congress enacted sanctions in response to the ballistic missile program and support for terrorist proxy groups. We must hold senior Iranian leadership accountable for destabilizing actions in the region and around the world.

Having seen my mom in community volunteer work my whole life and in Congress for 25 years, it is true as she often says that she sees her service as an extension of her role as a mother and a grandmother.

Mandela drafted the M Plan, a simple, commonsense plan for organization on a street basis so that Congress volunteers would be in daily touch with the people, alert to their needs and able to mobilize them.

When Peace Corps was first proposed, some in Congress assumed that only men would be volunteers.

What we don't need to work toward is polarizing America any greater than it is. Look, I'm up here in Washington, D.C., in the Congress of the United States, and we have, all day, a lot of verbal vomit that is doing enormous damage.

Why should Congresspeople have to visit D.C.? Thanks to Skype, meetings are possible across the country. Thanks to email, communications are simple. And we've had the technology to vote from afar for decades. Why should we have backroom deals made over cigars thousands of miles distant from those who are affected by those deals?

I always said I would vote for a resolution that gave the president the leverage to go to the United Nations, and then come back to the Congress for the authority to go to force.

It is hard to imagine an area in which Congress has more express constitutional authority to act than in protecting the right of minorities to vote.

If members of Congress were to vote to allow a military action, they might then share the blame if the mission were to go wrong. So they demand in the abstract that presidents ask their approval for going to war but in practice prefer to let presidents bear the burden alone.

For Members of Congress, we are saying here on the Democratic side of the aisle we are not going to vote for another pay increase for Members of Congress until the American people get an increase.

Many bills and many amendments that get passed get passed by a voice vote. They don't actually get voted in by roll call, meaning all 435 members don't vote on many of the bills.

For a public option, I voted for that when I was in Congress, and the Senate couldn't stand up to the health insurance industry and took it out.

To put that into some perspective, when Bill Clinton and Al Gore had first taken the idea of the Kyoto Protocol up to the Congress, the United States Senate voted it down 95 to nothing.

I'm probably one of the only people who has voted for the speaker of the House but didn't serve in Congress.

Well, you know, you're not going to have 86 percent of Congress voted out of office.

I took office as president in January 2003, and in April 2003, I sent to Congress my first proposal for tax reform. Some parts were voted on, with respect to federal taxes, and then it came to a standstill. Why? Because each state is interested in its own tax reform, has its own tax policy, and each state has its federal deputies and senators.

I voted in support of H.R. 5445, the 21st Century IRS Act, which requires the IRS to place more taxpayer services online.

It should be mandatory that any tax breaks go through appropriate committees and be voted on separately by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

My party was the only party that opposed the bifurcation of the state in Parliament, and I was suspended from the House along with the other MP from my party. TDP supported and voted for bifurcation, as did the Congress and BJP. Every party barring mine voted.

If Congress can move President's Day, Columbus Day and, alas, Martin Luther King's Birthday celebration for the convenience of shoppers, shouldn't they at least consider moving Election Day for the convenience of voters?

In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them.

I'd like to see that bipartisanship come back that we used to have in the House of Representatives, in the Clinton years. I think there's a possibility that the voters are going to send the message that everybody running - Congress, the Senate, the presidency - that they want us to come together.

Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men.

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.