Quotes About Congress

If the president is failing to disclose material facts with regard to legislation being presented to the Congress on a question as important as war and peace, I think it does impair the level of trust that the House and the Senate have for this administration.

Those of us who are pro-life should demand more from Congress. While we waste time on stuff like this, genuine legislation to protect life is ignored.

We know the legislation that passed the House. It was the worst piece of legislation frankly against working class people that I can remember in my political life in the Congress.

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.

Washington clearly enjoyed himself in Annapolis. He danced every dance at the governor's ball, accommodating all the ladies who lined up for the privilege of getting a touch of him. After the thirteen formal toasts at Congress's banquet, he added a concluding one of his own: "Competent Powers to Congress for general purposes."59 It had become his mantra. As much as he wished to get home to Virginia, he was also at home here in the swirl of continental politics.

Beginning in the 1980s, government, including presidents, Congress, and the Federal Reserve, gave us three decades of reduced regulation of the financial industry. Leverage, easy money, and "financial engineering" then brought a series of asset bubbles and threats to the stability of the financial system itself.

In fact, corporate and union moneys go overwhelmingly to incumbents, so limiting that money, as Congress did in the campaign finance law, may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done.

You should be in no doubt that, patriotic conservative that I am, I detest the burning of the nation's flag—and if I were king I would make it a crime. But as I understand the First Amendment, it guarantees the right to express contempt for the government, the Congress, the Supreme Court, even the nation and the nation's flag.

Congress, we have held, does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions - it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouse-holes.

As we have said before, the fact that a statute can be 'applied in situations not expressly anticipated by Congress does not demonstrate ambiguity. It demonstrates breadth.

I think a lot of politicians want to focus on the things that make them qualified for the job; the truth is no one's ready for the job of member of Congress until you're there.

Without any direction from Congress, our judicial branch has unilaterally created and defined qualified immunity.

Congress has been productive when focusing on bites of policy that don't inflame the divisions within the party and quietly do the work of governing.

As I say, I can't wait until Congress - half of Congress can get pregnant so we can quit fighting about birth control and Planned Parenthood.

I had quit the Congress to form the Progressive Democratic Front in 1978.

Not every dollar spent to gain influence on Capitol Hill comes from a big global industrial behemoth. Hundreds of small advocacy groups and nonprofits spend thousands each year to lobby Congress and federal agencies on the issues they care about most, and their efforts often go under the radar.

By rejecting the Iranian nuclear deal, Congress can help achieve the original goal of isolating the bad actors in Iran - the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, its Quds Force commander Quassem Soleimani, and the radical clerics.

I'm not going to raise the debt ceiling.

When a member of the House moves over to the Senate, he raises the IQ of both bodies.

I've done a contract with my district. I have term-limited myself. I am not taking the pension. I am not taking pay raises, and my family and I are bringing our own health care to Washington, D.C. And my dad taught me as a kid to lead by example - Congress should not have anything better than the American people.

We have to get rid of the constant fundraising that happens inside the Congress. Before, political parties used to raise money; now, individual members are raising money through the DCCC and the RCCC. It is absolutely corrupt.

When I first ran for Congress, I went to my daughter Alexandra, who was going to be a senior in high school, and said: 'I have a chance to run. I may not win, but I'd be gone three nights a week. So, if you want me to stay, I'll be happy to.' And do you know what she said to me? 'Mother, get a life!'

I was in my 30s when I quit my job and ran for Congress. So often, we're told it's OK to take these big career leaps when we're in our 20s, but we cast such an unfavorable light on those who take big risks later on in their careers or when they start families. There's enormous pressure to have it all figured out.

When I first ran for Congress in 1992, I campaigned on a pledge to make affordable, quality healthcare a right, not a privilege, for all Americans.