Legislative Behavior Quotes

Calling the New York State Legislature “a circus” is inappropriate. Circus animals are very intelligent.

They all want to be me. They do! What everybody else says they will do, I've already been doing. They all want to be me. It's become a joke in Congress how Dr. Gingrey and Mr. Kingston have been following my votes. They've even changed votes to what I voted, multiple times. Members of Congress are laughing about it.

We all know members of the House and Senate - especially the House - who are just crazy and say things that aren't true, Democrats and Republicans.

"I've become a huge fan of term limits," the former aide said, "because Armey and the others in leadership used to be just like you and your crew in their approach to spending. They have changed over the years."

Seldom does a member of either party have to be called down for inappropriate behavior on the House floor.

Members of Congress are less beasts of accumulating burden than computational machines designed to win re-election. Their sense of their own political interests is acute.

Congress will compromise to give stuff away to people, but you won’t find them compromising to take things away from people.

It is rare that a legislature reasons. It is too quickly impassioned.

I would like to believe I would not have behaved differently had I not made a term limits pledge, but my own frailties and human desire for prestige and position tell me my term limits pledge did make a difference in how I approached my job in Congress.

I went to Congress to change the policies of our country. I did not go to change the behaviors of members of Congress.

It is often quite impossible to gauge the mood of the Chamber in advance, particularly on big occasions. One moment, it is relaxed and good-humoured; at the next, it can be angry and querulous, and the House in this mood can be a formidable arena.

You can disagree with someone on issues, but you should never get personal. Joe Biden has never gotten personal, to my knowledge, with a fellow senator.

It is in the nature of the Congressional animal to be overly concerned with the backwaters of public policy and too little disposed to make hard decisions on mainstream national issues.