Tony Coleho Quotes

The conference committee, that wonderful wrestling ring of compromise where House and Senate versions of bill are wrenched into law ...

You start as far to the right as you can get, and go to the Conference Committee with the Senate, and hopefully end up with something you can live with.

Nearly all legislation is the result of compromise.

Deals, flattery, threats and promises are part of the process, certainly; do not flinch from any opportunity to scheme and plot, however sordid and demeaning it may appear.

The way it's supposed to work is you pass a bill out of the House, you pass a bill out of the Senate, you go to conference on it, and you iron out the differences.

If you go through the regular process of the House and Senate passing companion bills and then try and work out differences in the conference, maybe we can get something done.

If you know an amendment [you are opposed to] will pass you don't want a roll call [vote] because that makes it [the amendment] harder to drop in conference.

The Congress is the place where ordinary mortals go about the business of compromise—of compromise that gets us through the day.

Legislation is the art of compromise.

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.

You need the House, you need the Senate and you need the administration. And absent one of them, you're not going to get a heck of a lot done.

How many crossbreeds between a great dane and a chuwawa have you seen? Likewise there is great difficulty with a House -- Senate conference.

All legislation of any consequence is a compromise. You have to recognize that.

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

Don't call the question unless you've got the votes.

The way you get anything done in the Congress is through coalitions.

If you get your provision in the first draft of a bill, then the opposition has to get it out to defeat you.

Do you know what it takes to get a good piece of legislation passed ... one that everyone agrees on? The egos. The turf battles.... It's incredible.

The secret to legislative success in Virginia is courtesy, patience, and persistence; you usually get what you want. You won’t get it if you scream about it, and you won’t get it if you’re not willing to wait a long time.

You can't write laws in America if you don't compromise.

The Jacobins, finding themselves unable to manage their business on the questions in the House, have adopted a plan of meeting in divan and agreeing on measures to be pursued and passed in the House and then they vote in mass without admitting any alteration in the plan proposed. The wickedness of such a course has never been equalled.... [T]he spirit is intolerant and must lead to ruin.

The Senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, it's a pretty good detour.

... government by commission is a boon to all members of Congress, who cringe at facing no-win situations.... It gets the job done.

The difference between being a member of the House and being a member of the Senate is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.

Our whole system was to settle disputes within the [congressional] committees. It's a waste of time to bring out a bill if you can't pass it. I just don't like to have a record vote for the sake of having a vote.