John Harwood Quotes

What is interesting in Washington, D.C., is I've never missed a vote. The veterans' committee keeps track of hearings, and I've never missed a hearing or a vote on the VA committee.

The most effective executive branch officials try to help legislators develop explanations for the votes they are being asked to take.

I am a Marine Corps veteran, but more importantly - or as important maybe - I'm the chairman of the Oversight Investigation Subcommittee and the House Veterans Affair Committee.

Members [of Congress] never make mistakes. Only the [congressional] staff make mistakes.

The House of Representatives provides a special, nonpartisan staff of lawyers, called Legislative Counsel, who are experts in various areas of the law.

As a congressman, why should I be forced to peruse cable stations and blog sites for information on the discussions and then be asked to vote for the deal when I have no input and no time to know even what's in it?

I am a U.S. senator from North Carolina. I'm worried about doing the business on the Capitol Hill. I'm not going to get into the parlor games and the political discussions about a separate and co-equal branch.

Since I joined Congress, I've been shocked at how many times we were forced to vote on 1,000-plus-page bills without ample time to read or review what was in the final legislation. It's no wonder Congress doesn't enact good policy.

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ones, everybody on both sides of the aisle in Congress said we can't run a government by this kind of process and they repealed the law and that's good.

About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.

There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.

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

Any spending should be debated openly on the floor of the House and voted on in open session, with the American people having a chance to watch and listen.

You run Washington DC though the House. The Senate gets in the way. The President gets in the way.

A legislator has thousands of issues he must decide. Five minutes of access to present your case is very valuable.

If you love the parliamentary system and are totally devoted to it ... that has to survive above all else, above your own individual thoughts about philosophy.

The House [of Representatives] has become not so much a legislative assembly as a huge panel from which committees are selected.

I have found a reality in life, and that reality is the United States Congress.

Members of Congress often have to have testimony to hang their hat on if they wish to do something for you or do something for the country.

When it comes to listening to my constituents or to the governor's staff, who are more interested in their pet projects and their government cars, I'll vote for my constituents every time.

If I have to invade the sacred precincts of the White House to find out what is behind this paralysis of the Senate, I will.

The idea that every subcommittee of Congress gets to question the [cabinet] Secretaries as often as they want to is an extraordinary waste of time.

Bureaucrats understand who their real masters are. Their real masters are not their nominal department heads. The real powers are the chairmen on Capitol Hill.

The only oversight on many of these programs is what the annual review in the appropriations process gives you, because the legislative committees generally fail to do their jobs.

Congress is a collection of committees that come together in a Chamber periodically to approve one another's actions.