Bill Passage Quotes

Our system of checks and balances makes it simpler to stop bills than enact them.

Memo to future presidents: Never stake your entire survival on the painful passing of a bad bill. Never take the country down the road to 'Demon Pass.'

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.

What is the value of bringing a bill to the floor without the members having an opportunity to read it.

On the Sandy bill, I did the best I could on waste, fraud and abuse, and then when the final bill comes, you don't say, 'Hell, no' because you didn't get everything you want in there.

A commission presenting evidence doesn't do a Jedi mind trick and make state legislators in some state suddenly pass a bill.

We are going to get the Civil Right Bill! Dirksen is going to come out in support…. and don’t ask me what I had to give him.

Our forefathers never envisioned that a handful of staff write a bill and you rush it through a committee without reading it and you rush it to the floor without reading it, and you pass it just because you're a Democrat and Democrats told you to do that.

My campaign filed the bill back in 2002 in the Democratic legislature, 85% Democratic, they could have prevented any possibility of a split vote.

The VA MISSION Act is one of the first bills I was fortunate enough to support and see enacted into law.

A bill to emancipate all slaves born after the passing of the act.

What I find is most people have a civics book understanding for how Congress works and how a bill moves.

The bill then says if the Senate does not act, then H.R. 1 (the House-passed bill that cuts $61 billion) will be the law of the land. In addition to that, it says that if all else fails, and the Senate brings about a shutdown, then members should not get their pay.

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.

The immigration bill is going to pass. We're going to have a bill. It's going to get through the Senate. I think the fundamentals are there and the foundation is strong and the bill is going to happen. The House is going to be trickier, but I think it's going to happen there too.

It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

I was told freshman Republicans don't get their bills heard.

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

Corporations write the legislation. They vote on the legislation. And they give advice on how to pass their bills.

I'm not sure we will have every single Democrat ... but we want a large number of Republicans to be able to vote for this bill because we think that will encourage the House not only to move forward but to pass a bill.

It is a pipe dream to think that that bill is going to the floor and be voted on.

The role of the speaker of the House is to deliver enough votes by understanding and accommodating the individual bottom lines of enough members to pass the bill.

While we always strive to reach 218 with Republican votes, sometimes that is not possible with divided government, and the story of a bill that passed with 150 Republican votes is much more positive and assertive than the story of a bill that passes with 79 Republican votes.

The bill is emblematic of the attempt by the majority party to control every aspect of our lives.

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.