Legislative Delay Quotes

I am interested in the Panama Canal because I started it. If I had followed traditional, conservative methods I would have presented a dignified state paper to Congress and the debates on it would have been going on yet; but I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on the Canal does also.

It is with deep regret that the determination to assemble Parliament has been so long delayed.

September 11 was just an excuse to expand the Patriot Act. Legislation which had been proposed for years just got stuck in.

We've seen filibusters to block judicial nominations, jobs bills, political transparency, ending Big Oil subsidies - you name it, there's been a filibuster.

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'

The Senate was designed not to be efficient. If was designed to slow things down, And it does a pretty good job of it.

Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters.

What has the filibuster become? The filibuster has become a tool for slowing everything down…a tool by which one senator who announces that his object is to impose gridlock on the Senate, can do so.

The filibuster is a classic form of passive aggression in politics. If you will lose the vote…, you don’t let it go up for s vote. You stifle it… It’s a way to thwart something rather than doing something you want.

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..

If I have to filibuster on the Senate floor, I'll even read the King James Bible until the wall is funded.

I'll get 30,000 post cards on an issue before I can even find out that a bill has been introduced.

There are occasions when obstruction in Parliament brings greater benefits to the country.

The reason it takes so long to pass legislation is to give each and every one of you an opportunity to be heard.

Imagine if, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Gulf Coast residents had to wait on Democrats and Republicans to agree on cuts before receiving clean water or loans to rebuild. Congress' negotiations often come slow or not at all.

For me an hour-long speech is not a filibuster. It is a brief observation.

Unfortunately, too often the media doesn't ask the simple question: Why did elected leaders wait until the 11th hour to address government funding we've known would expire for months, if not years?

I am truly wearied with lounging here; doing nothing but feeding on the public funds—we have really done nothing yet beneficial; and for nine weeks has the House of Representatives been engaged debating the Tariff, that could have been as well decided in two.

When you use the word 'filibuster,' most of us in America - and I count myself among them - envision it as the ability to hold the floor on rare occasions to speak at length and make your point emphatically and even delay progress by taking hours.

I must say I am not pleased to have to arrange the Senate schedule around the availability of Senators who are running for President.

By the time Congress is even authorized to act after the President has launched nuclear weapons, there may no longer be a civilized world in which to do so.

In the United States Senate we have to break the culture of procrastination.

We've got this proposal which has been languishing in the legislature, the Water Legacy Act, which is derived from a Republican task force on protecting the Great Lakes. Yet nothing has been done on it.

The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelve-month between the ingross-ing a bill & passing it: that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word: and that if circum-stances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare majority.

The Republican senators are filibustering themselves out of their seats.