Arthur Cameron Quotes

I understand the politics of Washington, D.C. You need to hold firm, you need to work with your colleagues, and you need to throw elbows.

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.

You cannot rely on House or Senate staff to pass a piece of legislation for you, but if you have antagonized staff, they can block you.

Getting something through the House is only half the battle. So you put things in the House bill that you know will be taken out in conference and you leave things out of the House bill that will be in the Senate bill. It's like a chess game.

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

You gotta get into some confrontations sometimes to get the right result on the floor, but I think the bulk of our membership wants us to work out problems before a bill comes to the floor.

House Speaker John Boehner and presumed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell understand the art of politics.

The president wasn't dragged anywhere, ... In reality, I think, it was his opposition which was dragged upstairs one step at a time from zero to this number that was very close to what the president proposed.

If at the end of May we don't, we'll reform, regroup, decide how we're going to go about it, but if the task force can't come up with the bill, I'm going to push mine, and go ahead and make the changes in it that we've been working on now for a year or two and just go for it.

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.

Someday a political genius will come along and make the Senate work.

As a member of Congress, I'm often reminded that in baseball, as in diplomacy, you have to know when to hit, when to run, and when to show grace.

Our Keystone legislation received strong bipartisan support in the Senate. Although it didn't receive the 60 votes necessary for passage, 56 senators - a majority - voted in favor of the bill. Despite President Obama's actively lobbying against the bill, we still won the support of 11 Democrats.

One thing I have learned in my time in politics is that if one of the parties is shameless, the other party cannot afford to be spineless.

I have no idea what goes on in another person's mind. As a legislator, I need to be good at persuading people, counting votes and getting to 50 percent plus one. I don't go back and say, 'Why did this person get to the right position?' It's only, 'Are you yes or are you no?'

One of the things I give Nancy Pelosi a lot of credit for is that she's able to get things passed and hold her members together because she shows us that she's doing everything possible to get our views into these bills.

Politics are about preserving relationships at the end of the day, and it has nothing to do with the greater good for humanity. It's just all about business.

The art of politics is to design a solution that feels painless to all.

When you are President you have to get something done, and that often means compromise.

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

As to such of them as you cannot prevail with to concur you are to endeavor at least to soften them in their opposition or to get them to be absent.

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

The Senate's role is to advise and consent. Very little advice has been sought and consent has thus been a problem.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to let the skunks choose the weapons.