Congressional Power Quotes

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

The best thing to hold down spending is to have a Democratic President and a Republican Congress.

Congress is the appropriate place to make laws about our country's immigration policy; it is not something that the president gets to decide on his own.

The Senate cannot confirm an individual... who would support a scheme that violates our Constitution, eviscerates congressional authority.

The House [of Representatives] has become not so much a legislative assembly as a huge panel from which committees are selected.

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

Only the most politically secure congressmen can afford to offend constituents.

I can find nothing in the Constitution which … deprives of their citizenship any class of persons who were citizens of the United States at the time of its adoption, or who should be native-born citizens of any State after its adoption; nor any power enabling Congress to disfranchise persons born on the soil of any State, and entitled to citizenship of such State by its Constitution and laws. And my opinion is, that, under the Constitution of the United States, every free person born on the soil of a State, who is a citizen of that State by force of its Constitution or laws, is also a citizen of the United States.

The use of military force against a sovereign nation is an act of war. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly grants Congress the sole power to declare war.

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

I've been in Congress 14 years. I've been on the Appropriations Committee in which we are in charge of trying to move legislation.

The framers never intended an infinitely broad Commerce Clause that would let Congress dictate individuals' purchases.

The Constitution's pretty clear. The Federalist papers are pretty clear... They very specifically delegated the power to declare war to Congress. They wanted this to be a congressional decision; they did not want war to be engaged in by the executive without approval of Congress.

If we add state capitalism to the Bush administration's success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.

Political gerrymanders existed in colonial times and continued through the framing. The Framers provided a remedy for the problem: the Constitution gives state legislatures the initial power to draw federal election districts, but authorizes Congress to “make or alter” those districts

The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the Government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves.

The authority of Congress must be respected …. The President must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws.

The critical role of Congress in the adoption of international agreements was clearly laid out by our Founding Fathers in our Constitution. And it's a principle upon which Democrats and Republicans have largely agreed.

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied.

The authority to declare war rests in Congress, not in an out-of-control president.

You cannot move a piece of [energy] legislation through Congress in the year 2013 unless the American Petroleum Institute proposes it. You cannot move legislation without their consent. They are a de facto fourth branch of government.

As a member of Congress, a coequal branch of government designed by our founders to provide checks and balances on the executive branch, I believe that lawmakers must fulfill our oversight duty as well as keep the American people informed of the current danger.

I am no convert to any doctrine of the omnipotence of Congress.