legislative challenges Quotes

Bipartisanship is really tough to achieve when everyone on both sides is left with a bad, bad taste in their mouths.

In my opinion, it is not in our interest to have complicated negotiations with a region, and then have to follow it up with 535 negotiations at home. I have experienced recounts, and it is better to vote once.

Foreign policy questions bring trouble to senators and congressmen—rarely benefit.

Mr. President, it may surprise my colleagues, but I am no fan of federal disaster programs for agriculture. They are difficult to pass and often a disaster to implement.

Some of my constituents let me know, that they would not listen to me on such a dry subject as the welfare of the nation, until they had something to drink, and that I must treat them.

Obama came in really wanting to change things, but he hit a wall of corporate money, oil and coal money: when he tried to pass the Cap and Trade system of pharmaceutical money, when he tried to pass the Obamacare - which, of course, then got watered down into a much less effective, much less economical, program.

As you get larger, it is harder to have focused discussions. Because one of the things I've learned about Congress over the past four years that I've been in is there's no shortage of opinions about how things should be done on any particular subject.

The reality is that the Republican Party may have unified government but is not unified enough on many major signature policy areas.

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.

Ancient barrows get cleared away. Legislation is pretty much 19th century. Global warming means there is an awful lot of erosion, exposing new archaeology, there is not the funding around to deal with it.

The shelf life of a seventh-year State of the Union address is about five minutes. Presidents can propose stuff. They're probably not likely to get it done.

Congress doesn’t do comprehensive well.

If immigration reform was easy, Congress would have dealt with it 15 years ago.

I think we are making progress, but we have long way to go. People also have got to understand the agenda that we are fighting for. This is a senator who has taken on every powerful special interest, whether it's Wall Street, whether it's drug companies who are ripping off the American people, the military industrial complex.

There never was a law yet made, I conceive, that hit the taste exactly of every man, or every part of the community; of course, if this be a reason for opposition, no law can be executed at all without force

The real problem with big issues like Medicare is that both parties have to be brave at the same time. Every pollster will tell you not to do that to get partisan advantage. Too many people here are willing to deliberately harm the country for partisan gain. That is borderline treason.

Every Congressman, every Senator knows precisely what causes inflation...but can't, support the drastic reforms to stop it because it could cost him his job

Representatives of Congress come to Washington representing their districts, but they don’t necessarily understand the complexities of the world.

... government by commission is a boon to all members of Congress, who cringe at facing no-win situations.... It gets the job done.

People of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won't even use the term "sustainability" or "climate change" in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we're all dealing with. The average American doesn't even believe climate change is real, they think it's all a hoax.

Regulating the prices of goods in general would be an endless task, and no legislator has ever been weak enough to think of attempting it.

There were two unpleasant surprises. One was the inertia of Congress, the length of time it takes to get a complicated piece of legislation through ... and the other was the irresponsibility of the press..

There is nothing that I didn't get to do while I was serving in Congress - except be in the majority.

What we don't need to work toward is polarizing America any greater than it is. Look, I'm up here in Washington, D.C., in the Congress of the United States, and we have, all day, a lot of verbal vomit that is doing enormous damage.

This is nothing new. We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Right Act - constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation.