Legislative Strategy Quotes

Our whole system was to settle disputes within the [congressional] committees. It's a waste of time to bring out a bill if you can't pass it. I just don't like to have a record vote for the sake of having a vote.

Legislatures now pass statutes because of, not despite, their lack of clarity. By using vague language, legislators can avoid making the difficult political choices that they have to confront when drafting a statute precisely.

My Republican friends are lamenting reconciliation. But I would recommend for them to go back and look at history.

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

Getting something through the House is only half the battle. So you put things in the House bill that you know will be taken out in conference and you leave things out of the House bill that will be in the Senate bill. It's like a chess game.

…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.

We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!

My advice would be the same advice that I gave President [George W.] Bush when he won in '04, and, kind of, wasn't followed. I think you go with the things you know you can pass.

The headline in the Washington Post: "Democrats Confident They Can Block Trump's Agenda After Spending Bill Win." They think now they can stop Donald Trump's agenda for the next 3-1/2 years. They've shown how to do it. The agenda tied to the budget. The budget tied to government shutdowns. The Republicans cave at the first mention of a government shutdown; ergo, they've shut down Trump. That's what they're thinking.

I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software.

It's far from clear in general that Donald Trump is a guy who really thinks about the details of policy and is going to do the kind of heavy lifting you have to do as president to get those policies through in Congress. I think the hope is that Paul Ryan and his crew will push policies through Congress and Trump will just sign them. That's not really how policy works.

It's always easier in the Senate minority to maintain unity.

What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our party]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I'll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.

If you know an amendment [you are opposed to] will pass you don't want a roll call [vote] because that makes it [the amendment] harder to drop in conference.

McCain was so passionate and determined, but he was also practical. He understood what a heavy lift it was to get a 60-vote, filibuster-proof margin on something that lawmakers feared would hurt their ability to campaign to keep their jobs.

Desperate times require desperate measures. What Lincoln and the Lobbyist for the Amendment and the Manager of the Amendment and himself, what they did to get this passed was not illegal. It was murky, but what they did was noble and grand. How they went about it was somewhat murky. Nothing they did was really illegal.

Like the battleships of old, omnibus programs present too tempting a target, too easily destroyed by a single attack, to make it through a fight.... It is through incremental change after change, step after step, that a statesman of today can vindicate a bold vision.

And I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate, but the fact of the matter is we used the same advisers and they say it's the same plan.

The question I have heard from some Democrats saying that "You know what? Push for gun control, but not now."

If we continue to fight the National Rifle Association on their home court, which is the legislative front, I think we'll continue to be frustrated. But when you have an ability to go directly to the public, that's a completely different field of engagement, and I think the NRA is not adept at that kind of engagement.

All you need to know is this. You can never go wrong by voting for a bill that fails, or against a bill that passes.

Obviously, you cannot do full repeal of Obamacare without a 60-vote bill in the Senate, but you can surely gut the law and give people true healthcare freedom with 51 votes in the Senate.

The Obama administration excelled at pushing its radical agenda through any means necessary. Since its gun-control agenda was not going anywhere, it decided to control ammunition, which would have had the same effect.

What I said to the members [of Congress] who hoped they would be chairmen: let's don't have that problem. Be thinking now about legislation that you have, preferably that enjoys some Democratic support because we certainly didn't think we were going to have 60 and we don't.

The filibuster is used more aggressively, so I think doing each individual appropriations bill through regular order would be a home run. But I think that we should try to hit a few singles.