Barack Obama Quotes
If I could solve these problems with passing laws in the Congress, I would do so.
Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States (Democrat, IL), United States Senator (Democrat, IL), Response to questioner who asked why he didn’t promulgate laws to solve some of the nation’s problems which the Congress was gridlocked over, December 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
His admonition did little good. That Congress passed fewer bills than any other in history.
Later in the Great Recession of 2008, almost everyone realized what the queen had observed years earlier.
He was discussing “Stand Your Ground Laws” which were enacted to solve one problem, but then effected many other things negatively. The law, once passed, is the law regardless of whether it has adverse consequences that the legislators never anticipated. This is one of the reasons that drafting legislation is such a difficult skill.
What makes this quotation meaningful is the fact that Roosevelt and other Presidents before had not as a rule contacted or lobbied, much less pressured individual members of Congress about specific legislation. While today this is so common that many members of Congress would feel insulted if they did not get a personal appeal from the President to vote for a bill. This was another “first” for TR. The historical bill in question was the National Reclamation Bill.
The President had threatened to veto a budget bill if it contained a provision that would increase taxes for the wealthy. There were not enough votes to override the veto. The majority leader urged dropping the provision:
He was a Congressman at the time. The problem of legislating in an election year seems to have always been difficult.
For complex legislation, there are very few members of Congress who vote on the legislation who could honestly say that they have read the entire bill. Breyer and many others do not see this as a major problem; many others consider it a disgrace that members of Congress will vote for or against a law that they have not even read.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
