Barack Obama Quotes

It's no great secret, number one, in my view, and I think the view of most Americans, that Congress itself is pretty dysfunctional. We are not addressing the real needs of the American people. And second of all, philosophically, there is a huge division between the House and the Senate.

Everywhere I go - from Main Street to Wall Street - people ask, 'What's happened to our political system? Why can't Washington folks work together?'

I think it's a time to be sad about what's been done to the United States Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world.

It will be an unusual dynamic [in Congress]. It won't be like the rallying behind President [Barack] Obama in 2009 or behind President [George W.] Bush, even at the beginning of his presidency, or even [Bill] Clinton in '93, when he got his budget through on a partisan vote.

Congress is unable to do the work of the American people because too many politicians believe that compromise means capitulation.

Texans don't want to sit back and watch Austin turn into Washington, D.C. State leaders in power keep forcing people to opposite corners to prepare for a fight instead of coming together to get things done.

Aren't we at the point where the closer we get to chaos, the more concern that there should be about coming to the table and compromising with Democrats? This is not leadership. This is almost like dictatorship.

I would like Obama to be tougher on going up against the Republicans, I don't think he should try to be so moderate.

Government is dysfunctional.

We saw what happened in Jimmy Carter's administration. President Carter was a good man with the best of intentions. But he came to Washington without a good working relationship with Democratic members of Congress, which played a big part in his administration's problems.

We've gotten to the point now where Republicans and Democrats have nothing in common besides being members of the 'caustic caucus,' and we can't get anything done.

You can see how dysfunctional this Congress is.

A concrete agenda and landslide victory might not even guarantee a president his mandate in a capital as polarized as Washington.

My concern about Barack Obama is he ran a campaign in 2008 where he said we're going to bring people together and solve big problems. And he specifically talked about the need to reach across the aisle and deal with issues like the economy, which was obviously the top issue in 2008. It has not happened.

The Senate as an institution is broken. We're not doing the work of the American people and the rules are being abused. The only way to get us back to the traditions where the Senate is doing the work of the American people is to change the rules.

President Bush said that he wanted to change the tone in Washington. He has; it has gotten worse.

Rarely in American history has any particular Congress been held in high esteem …

The impeachment process [is] just one more pathogen in the medical chest of toxic politics.

I don’t chose my friends and associates on the basis of political party. The Senate has become altogether too nasty.

We have moved toward a kind of scorpions-in-a-bottle Government where you have two branches [executive and legislative] that don't understand many of the legitimate needs of the other branch.

The public good is being compromised in the conflicts between our rival political parties.

Congress doesn’t do comprehensive well.

Divided government need not be dysfunctional government.

The only time the Democrats and the Republicans are together is when they are voting for their own pay raise.

You used to get legislation done by getting the moderates to agree. But we have no moderates now so it doesn’t get done