Hill Quotes

Explaining his opposition to civil rights legislation:

Many members of his own party opposed some of the President's policies and programs, and party loyalty and discipline were strained:

Leader of the East German Democracy Movement. Musical Director of the New York Philharmonic

The new White House Chief of Staff, a former governor, had much early difficulty in dealing with Congress:

Complaining about the unwieldy House rules:

of requests from conservative Congressmen who want pork projects added to appropriation bills In one of the great ironies of Washington, Dyer was named “Porker of the Year” yet there was no pork placed in appropriations bills that were not specifically requested (insisted upon) by a member of Congress.

One of the reasons that judges and government officials have much difficulty in enforcing and interpreting laws is that the laws themselves are often very vague and/or ambiguous. Often this is the result of a political compromise or one part of a law being at odds with another written be a different legislators. Also, this is a way of Congress avoiding tough issues—every member can say what it is that he/she voted for and the vagueness allows their opponents to claim that it means just the opposite. The Executive and Judicial Branches then have to resolve the issue.

See Brady {640935} for a later version of this idea.

Most American politicians and citizens, unlike DeLay, believe that arguing against the opponents’ political philosophy should be done with debate, civil argument, advocacy, speechmaking and writing and not by attacking opponents and confronting them whenever possible. Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.

the largest economic and banking reform in decades The Dodd-Frank reform legislation was very complicated. It was extensively debated including attacks against provisions that were not even in the bill (See {632833}.) Few of the supporters and fewer of the opponents understood the bill. Many members on both sides had not even read the entire bill. It passed.

The objective of a large proportion of the Congress then was not to improve the nation or even pass legislation, but to preserve their ideology and attack and weaken the other party. Compromise for example is probably the best legislative practice, but that Congress had a substantial number of Tea Party and other ultra conservatives who believed that any compromise at all was an immoral abandonment of principle.