Congress Quotations | Page 2

I was sent there by the Free Congress Committee, headed by Paul Weyrich. Fred Smith and I were sent down as observers, with reporters' credentials, so we could witness the events.

The retirement system that is in place for members of Congress and other federal workers features what is known as the Federal Employment Retirement Plan.

The attack on ObamaCare was that Congress does not have the power under the Commerce Clause to force a private citizen into a private contractual relationship. If such a thing is permitted to stand, the anti-ObamaCare forces argue, there will be no limit to Congress's power in the future.

It is not secret here in Congress we have not had the discipline in many instances to keep our hands out of the cookie jar of Social Security. Now to stop this I propose that in the future that Congress cannot get its hands on the money in the first place.

With gridlock the norm, Congress's approval rating is below 10 percent and the public has lost faith in its national leadership.

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.

They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.

When I was first elected to the House in 2006, it was important to me to send a clear message to the people of NY-20: I wanted to be a representative for the people and shed some light on their government, so I became the first member of Congress to post my schedule, my financial disclosures and my earmark requests all online.

I just thought it was unconscionable for the Congress to insert itself into this debate. We are particularly unqualified to make that decision and to intrude ourselves into the lives of this family.

Look, I think by the time my case was over and other ones, everybody on both sides of the aisle in Congress said we can't run a government by this kind of process and they repealed the law and that's good.

As one of the most conservative members of Congress and a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment, I am constantly under attack for my values and beliefs.

But I made one mistake which I would never repeat as a member of Congress when I was in Washington, and that was when I was elected I didn't go on trips because I was so afraid of having someone accuse me of taking junkets.

There is no getting around it; Congress is failing the American people.

Incumbency adds a layer of advantage on top of this party dominance. But rather than foster an environment in which members of Congress feel free to buck popular sentiment and wrestle seriously with the problems confronting the country, it reinforces the ideological divide between the parties.

I came to Congress to help reduce spending.

The number one thing I will take with me is my experience as a social worker who saw what happened to families who couldn't find jobs, struggled to take care of their health and saw opportunity slipping away for their kids. I ran for Congress because politicians were fighting with each other instead of looking out for these families.

I am not surprised that this is a longer bit of work than many of us would have hoped. It is not where any of us would have hoped it is. And I think we need to give credit to the Republicans in Congress who have done everything they can to defeat every jobs bill and slow down the economy.

Though Congress continues to explore possible solutions to ensure social security solvency, everyone must take personal responsibility to prepare their own retirement savings accordingly.

Congress can't take the year off, election or no election.

Congress did a good thing back in 1995 in passing the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act. That act did a simple thing. It provided automatic royalty relief for new leases for 5 years in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Opening up the Capitol dome and giving the public a look at the inner workings of Congress - however messy they may be - certainly won't be pretty. But trust isn't earned by showing off only your Sunday best. The dirty laundry has to be aired, too.

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

One of the litmus tests for judicial conservatism is the idea of judicial restraint - that courts should give substantial deference to the decisions of the political process. When Congress and the president enact a law, conservatives generally say, judges should avoid 'legislating from the bench.'

The reality is is that Congress is a very male-gendered oriented institution. Out of the, you know, more than 10,000 people who've ever been elected to Congress, you know, only about 250 of them have ever been women.

If a gigantic asteroid were barreling toward impact with our planet, you can bet there would be at least a few members of Congress who would insist on leaving it alone, either because they would see it as a warning shot from the Almighty or because a mining company with a savvy team of lobbyists had laid claim to the big rock.

With the death of bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was okay to toss out our civil liberties if the 'bad guys' were scary enough.

Lawmakers misrepresent the facts when they call the manufacturing deduction known as Section 199 - passed by Congress in 2004 to spur domestic job growth - a 'subsidy' for oil and gas firms. The truth is that all U.S. manufacturers, from software producers to filmmakers and coffee roasters, are eligible for this deduction.

If we are to change America, we must change the United States Congress.

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

In 2001, Congress passed much needed tax relief to allow Americans to keep more of their hard earned money and spend it as they see fit - rather than how the federal government sees fit.

Members of Congress must live according to the same laws as everyone else.

One of the primary reasons I first ran for Congress was to be a voice for our troops, veterans and military families.

The War Powers Act requires presidents to seek the consent of the American people, through their representatives, before sending our troops into war. It is the responsibility of Congress to deliberate and consult with the executive branch before involving ourselves in a military conflict.

Our runaway judiciary is badly in need of restraint by Congress.

Be assured that, as certain as Congress transcends its assigned limits and usurps powers never conferred, or stretches those conferred beyond the proper limits, so surely will the fruits of its usurpation pass into the hands of the Executive. In seeking to become master, it but makes a master in the person of the President.

As a member of Congress, I believe Congress must provide oversight of actions by the Executive Branch as our system of checks and balances requires.

A difference must be made between a decision against the constitutionality of a law of Congress and of a State. The former acts as a restriction on the powers of this government, but the latter as an enlargement.

Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines.

The nation is faced with one of the most corporate-orientated anti-consumer Congresses in our history.

When I ran for Congress I promised to help make health care affordable again.

All too often in tough economic times, it is the environment that gets left on the cutting room floors of Congress as everyone scraps for limited federal dollars.

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

The Pentagon got fed up with its recruits getting ripped off by payday lenders and in 2007 got Congress to make it illegal to extend such loans to members of the military. But civilians remain fair game.

I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humanness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.

I think it's time... that we reform Congress to the point where all public assistance comes in one single committee. One area where all public assistance can be located, and it will be easy to see all the duplications, all the waste, so much easier to see areas where fraud is running rampant.

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?

My father was in Congress when I was born. He was mayor my whole life from when I was in grade school - first grade - to when I went away to college.

There are a lot of people in Congress who would never have made a great career or fortune in any other profession. But after they spend a while hanging out with the rich guys, they begin to feel they've been undervalued, and that an eventual seven-figure income as a lobbyist isn't just an opportunity, it's their due.

Not a single time have we gotten a right from Congress or from the President. We get them from God.

Instead of marginalizing women, Congress must get to work on policies that can foster job creation and fuel economic growth.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

The American people need to tell their member of Congress that we need a strong defense to protect us and to prevent wars. We can't get away with simply leading from behind and gutting our defenses.

Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention - the defining injustice of Guantanamo - as his own policy.

Remember, the Congress doesn't get as many opportunities to make an impression with the public.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Those of us in the Congress must confront and overcome Republican intransigence to increasing the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance and protecting food stamps.

I think voters want somebody who understands their problems. You're right that they don't expect the president to fix everything. When he's wrestling with Congress and Wall Street and the rest of the world, they hope he'll be looking at things from their vantage point.

Thousands of members of Congress have come and gone over the years, their individual achievements hidden in committee reports, private compromises, amendments pushed through or blocked, and innumerable, unnoticed meetings.

During my first term in Congress, I signed a pledge that I will take no more earmarks and I've been faithful to that pledge.

Obamacare is the wildly complex Rube Goldberg contraption it is because getting the legislation through Congress required so many political tradeoffs and so many unavoidable deals with so many vested interests. But that's no excuse.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.

I don't disagree with ending Congress' retirement program. I'm a governor, I don't have a retirement program in my state, and I don't disagree with that.

It was the Congress that imposed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.

Since the enactment of the War Powers Act in 1973, which I supported then and support now, Congress has been reluctant to assert its authority when presidents decide to send American soldiers into harm's way.

I was in the Minnesota state Senate from 2000 until 2006. In 2006, I was urged to run for Congress, I did. And I've been here ever since.

I have voted against only one of President Obama's nominees: Michael Froman, a Citigroup alumnus who is currently storming the halls of Congress as U.S. Trade Representative pushing trade deals that threaten to undermine financial regulation, workers' rights, and environmental protections.

A competition of the best ideas - that should be what Congress is about.

Since coming to Congress in 1971, I have been fighting to help create an environment where the goals of the National Work and the Family Month can become a reality.

Before Congress cuts funding for Head Start, Social Security, and financial aid for college, we have got to make sure that large, profitable corporations are paying their fair share of taxes.

At the insistence of the Bush administration, Congress in 2006 passed legislation that required the Postal Service to prefund, over a 10-year period, 75 years of future retiree health benefits.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

During the Reagan years, government shut down eight different times under a Democrat Congress. The president and Congress worked together and got things straightened out. Under the Carter years, again a Democrat Congress, the government shut down five times.

The potential for him to be a leader of significant reform in the wake of this corrupt Congress is very great. We want the parties to fight over who has the best reform. It will be interesting to watch and see if he takes advantage of the opportunity.

The persistent and growing high level of child poverty reflects conscious and misguided choices, ... How can the Bush Administration and Congress give enormous tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans who have benefited most from the economic recovery while threatening to cut the budgets for Medicaid, Food Stamps and other programs that assist poor children who continue to be left behind?

The perception by the core value voters is that Congress has not done enough to advance their core issues. We believe they have been at work, but there is more work to be done to convince their constituencies.

The point is, am I going to let Mary Smith and these other nice, older women be sent out of here thinking they'll have a voucher for the rest of their lives, when Congress is looking to cut the program? They're going to be in Miami somewhere, and they'll be homeless. That's why the fight is going on.

Unprecedented cost growth and significant schedule delays have seriously damaged the credibility of our Air Force program management and caused some of my colleagues in Congress to push for significant reductions in the Air Force's space programs.

unprecedented attempt by Congress to structure the office of the president.

We applaud those lawmakers, from both sides of the aisle, who have demanded the truth from the government. The rule of law has been broken, and Congress and the public have a right to know. Effective and public oversight can be done without compromising state secrets. The administration must stop using national security as a blanket reason to keep their illegal activities hidden in the shadows.

We applaud those in Congress who have refused to let drilling proponents manipulate them and the democratic process. Although there are some still willing to do Big Oil?s bidding, the drilling lobby and their allies will be hard-pressed to keep Arctic drilling in the budget knowing that it is dead on arrival in the House.

We've accomplished, as a team, more than many other members -- probably most other members of the Congress and Senate -- accomplish in an entire lifetime, and I appreciate that very much,

We are looking to Congress, ... It is clearer than ever that America's domestic manufacturers cannot count on any help from the White House to remedy this totally unacceptable situation.

When you talk about a tax plan that has to make it through Congress, you can't alienate the blue states, because you need a lot of red votes in blue states to get it passed.

There is no question of an alliance with the BJP. We would like to maintain equal distance from both Congress and BJP.

There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.

There is no more important economic policy issue today than helping our nation remain the global innovation leader. To do this, our leadership must focus on an aggressive agenda to support math and science education, patent litigation reform, healthcare information technology, and research and development. We thank President Bush for his leadership and urge all members of Congress to address these issues in a comprehensive fashion to get the job done.

Until last year, Congress was just a club; we are trying to make it more serious and more influential for the student body. We are looking to reform our committees to make ourselves more respected and more advertised. We are trying to become more visible in the community as well as make Congress more visible on campus though we know we still have a long way to go.

While many members of Congress have some reservations, members of Congress by and large have decided this is the right thing to do at the right time. But now he must take this to the public,

Whether wisely or not, one of the first priorities of the incoming Obama administration was to present a package of healthcare benefits, which, to no one's surprise, produced an uproar in Congress and an assortment of polls declaring that the majority of Americans were opposed to it.

Whether it's the courts or regional offices of executive agencies, members of Congress want some control over how things are done in their states or districts. As long as they have some influence over the picks, they like the patronage system.

We respectfully request that Congress do no harm by distorting markets or seeking punitive taxes on an industry working hard to respond to high prices and supply shortfalls.

When we finally decide on who our president is, and on the day when we realize the economy is so weak that that new president must cut taxes, and he can't do it because of a divided congress and all the animosity that comes out of this agonizingly long presidential election, the dollar's going to be in trouble.

We would urge both Congress and our international partners to avoid the temptation to renegotiate the deal,

What has this session of Congress accomplished? I'm sure they can give me a list of minor technical bills but on the big things they have failed.

What has happened along the Gulf Coast is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis, ... The Congress is committed to providing the funding necessary to not only offer immediate relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina but to also help rebuild their lives and get them back on their feet.

What has been the response of this Republican-controlled Congress to the administration's manipulation of intelligence that led to this protracted war in Iraq? Basically nothing,

We can count on the fact that this will be probed by the American public, particularly by the US Congress.

What's really reprehensible is that friends of the oil industry in Congress are using ... a disaster, which essentially pointed up our shortcomings in protecting public health and safety, to repeal environmental rules that are designed to protect public health and safety.

Unless and until Congress changes the formula, we'll calculate the fee according to the formula.

Unfortunately, it looks like Congress is going to squander another day without getting any substantial work done.