Quotes About Congress

All told, the Fifty-first Congress passed 531 public laws, representing an unprecedented level of legislative accomplishment unequaled until Theodore Roosevelt's second term. After the final adjournment on March 3, the historian and Republican congressman Henry Cabot Lodge wrote, "No Congress in peace time since the first has passed so many great & important measures of lasting value to the people.

As for Congress, one imaginative polling firm found that brussels sprouts, head lice, cockroaches, colonoscopies, and gonorrhea were more popular than our elected representatives. Apparently, the American people realized that when you take it up the ass from a proctologist, at least it's for your own well-being. From Congress, not so much

In the spring of 1919 La Guardia found himself still way down on the seniority list in a Congress described by muckraking editor H. L. Mencken as "petty lawyers and small-town bankers" and a "depressing gang of incompetents." All La Guardia could do was rail at "outrages" in speeches that few people paid attention to and cast votes that changed nothing. Not even the "progressives," such as Robert La Follette and George Norris, took him seriously.

He believed the future of the nation was at stake, and he returned day after day to fight his war against the "slaveocracy." And Quincy voters sent him back to Congress again and again. Louisa fretted about his health and safety, but she had lost all influence over him and could do nothing to restrain him. He was unstoppable—a meteor spiraling out of control in the political firmament.

He supported Jefferson's proposed Land Ordinance of 1784,22 ceding Virginia's western territory to Congress for division into fourteen future states in which "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude." Congress defeated the Ordinance by one vote.

And to Virginia governor Edmund Randolph, who also favored a bill of rights, he explained, "The human race is too apt to rush from one extreme to another.… For now, the cry is power; give Congress power, without reflecting that every free nation that hath ever existed has lost its liberty by the same rash impatience and want of necessary caution.

I enjoyed the administrative work because it involved working with Congress, city council, and the mayor. I had never been a politician so it was fun - learning political maneuvering.

Not everyone was laughing. Ascribing "incapacity, stupidity, imbecility, gross ignorance and habitual venality" to the stalemated Congress, the New York Herald angrily concluded that "no remedy whatever is to be looked for from their representatives." Sounding eerily like President Buchanan in his December annual message, it blamed not Southern extremism but "republican fanaticism" for the current "avalanche of destruction.

A new poll shows only 3 percent strongly approve of the job Congress is doing, with a margin of error of 4 percent, so it's possible that "less than no one" thinks they're doing a good job.

There are 249 millionaires in Congress. Remember a couple of years ago when this new Congress told us they had the solution to the recession? Apparently, they didn't share it with the rest of us.

Researchers found a frog in new guinea that is so tiny, they believe it's the smallest vertebrate on the planet. It has the tiniest backbone of any living creature, except members of Congress.

A new study published by The British Medical Journal found that inactivity can kill you. I mean, these are the kind of findings that just scare the hell out of Congress.

Congress, responding with patriotic fervor, approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, as it was called, with only desultory debate.

All this is to offer the heresy that the role of presidential leadership, yet another shadow cast by the Roosevelt years, is often exaggerated. Presidents of course can take executive actions, especially in foreign affairs, that have dramatic effects. But only sometimes, for many snags—bureaucratic inertia, the capriciousness of public opinion, partisan opposition, interest group pressures, Congress—hem in presidential designs.

Members of Congress, outraged by the events at Selma, forty times interrupted his address with applause. Johnson closed by raising his thumbs, fists clenched, and proclaiming, Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And, we shall . . . overcome.

Few Americans—or members of Congress—read The Public Interest. Still, the rapid rise of the neo-cons to intellectual respectability was revealing. And their complaints, especially about the dead hand of bureaucracy, epitomized a new mood of doubt.

As Melvin Laird, his Defense Secretary, recalled, Every effort was made to create an economic boom for the 1972 election. The Defense Department, for example, bought a two-year supply of toilet paper. We ordered enough trucks . . . for the next several years.48 Congress, too, propelled election-year spending by its approval of sharp hikes in Social Security benefits: some $8 billion in extra checks went out in October.

Congress, however, stiffened, cutting off appropriations for such bombing as of August 15, 1973. In November it overrode a presidential veto to pass a War Powers Act. This required American Presidents to inform Congress within forty-eight hours of deployment of United States forces abroad and to bring the troops home within sixty days unless Congress explicitly endorsed what the President had done.56

Kennedy, who had a mentally ill sister, also moved more actively than presidential predecessors to advance the cause of mental health. In 1963 Congress passed a Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Act, which funded local mental health centers that were to provide a range of out-patient services, including marital counseling, help for delinquents, and programs for unwed mothers and alcoholics.

Sustained by popular responses such as these, conservatives in Congress mobilized to attack an administration effort then pending to exterminate rats in the ghettos. One denounced the measure as a civil rats bill. Another suggested that the President buy a lot of cats and turn them loose.

Unlike the United States Congress, which mostly forbids outside employment, state legislatures are generally composed of people with other careers.

Unlike the Japanese internment, water-boarding was ordered and served up in secret. But it, too, was America's policy, not just Dick Cheney's. Congress was informed about what was happening and raised no objection. The public knew, too.

Unlike the Congress, our party believes in democracy and takes a collective decision.

Unlike the Congress, the AAP stands for democratic rights of states, stands against the infringement of democratic rights by the Centre.