Congressional Influence Quotes

The Military Industrial Complex. President Eisenhower had it wrong. It’s the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

Congress ... is far more than the simple, limited advisory council that most Presidents would like to maintain.

The Media are corporations so... It's the concentrations of private power which have an enormous, not total control, but enormous influence over Congress and the White House and that's increasing sharply with sharp concentration of private power and escalating cost of elections and so on.

In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.

I see more clearly than ever, and I thought I saw before, that congressional life is not the best introduction to the President's house. Great and fully equipped as the general [James Garfield] is, there are embarrassments growing out of his long and brilliant career in Congress, which Jackson and Lincoln, and Grant, and myself, escaped.

Our lives, our liberty, and our property are never in greater danger than when Congress is in session.

When I go up there, I see coal lobbyists, oil lobbyists, natural gas lobbyists, nuclear power lobbyists, somehow they think that's where the action is in Congress.

The desire of appropriations committee members to protect their prerogatives prevent Congress from effectively monitoring the intelligence community.

It's important to remember that whatever the presidential candidates of either party say, they will have to interact with the United States Congress, particularly the Senate, when it comes to crafting policy... we play an important role. And I'm going to continue to play that role, whoever is president.

…the War Department was…something that stood between the Army and Congress; that way to get legislation for the Army was no to try to educate Congress and the people to Army methods, but to educate the War Department to congressional methods.

Leave me alone. I'm Carl Albert, Speaker of the House ... I just got you raises.

When preparing your return, you should be sure to avoid common mistakes. The two most common taxpayer mistakes, states the IRS booklet, are (1) "failure to include a current address," and (2) "failure to be a large industry that gives humongous contributions to key tax-law-writing congresspersons."

There is only one thing I want to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence.

One of my big beliefs about Washington is that we highly overstate the power of individuals and highly underrate seeing Washington as a system, in general, but, in particular, we highly underrate the power of Congress.

A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.

Getting members of Congress to do things they don’t want to do is a crucial part of being President.

The ideal weapons system is built in 435 congressional districts, and it doesn't matter whether it works or not.

I definitely think it's important for a CEO of any large corporation to understand how policy impacts their business and be aware of the decisions being made in Congress.

As a founder and most senior member of the CBC, John Conyers has been an advocate for the Congressional Black Caucus and a respected leader in the House of Representatives.

Many chiefs of staff are close, very close, to their bosses on Capitol Hill.

Taxpayers are burdened with so-called defense spending that is used not for defense, but to create or hold jobs in someone's congressional district, or to continue to pile up profits for an arms manufacturer.

There are over 30,000 lobbyists circling around the 535 members of Congress. The people should have their Senator as their lobbyist.

It's no secret I was part of John Dingell's whip team.

Appointments to office were not to be made nor expected merely as rewards for partisan services, nor merely on the nomination of members of Congress, as being entitled in any respect to the control of such appointments.

From campaign contributions to expensive perks paid for by special interests, wealthy donors and corporate special interests have increasingly been able to purchase influence and promote their agendas in Congress.