Kris Kobach Quotes

To get Congress to do anything.

You think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C.

If I only had 12 years left to live, I'd want to live it as a member of Congress because that was the 12 longest years of my life.

It is a great privilege for any man to become a member of the Senate.

I was very productive as a senator for my state.

Let a bill, or law, be read, in the one branch or the other, every one instantly thinks how it will affect his constituents.

The place where the system and people's intentions meet is the political arena.

I'm interested in being part of a majority in the Senate.

A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much...

You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!

For the first thirty years it [the House of Representatives] was the controlling branch of the government, and the one of whose action the public eye was fixed.

A legislator has thousands of issues he must decide. Five minutes of access to present your case is very valuable.

What Congress does is respond to pressures that are upon it.

The last thing you want is to have to make a decision for political purposes.

I have never felt that it was my duty to attempt to coerce Senators or Representatives, or take reprisals.

The people never have and never will be able to understand how the will of a majority of the House of Representatives can be set aside by the judgment of a few men on a powerful committee.

Sometimes political parties have a very short window to influence public policy

You cannot make elected officials … do what they will not do.

Being a member of Congress is a hard job but it's an uplifting job.

As the legislature of my state has thought proper to bring my name forward without consulting me, I mean to be silent, and let the people do as seemeth unto them.

In all legislative assemblies, the greater the number composing them may be, the fewer will be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings.

We cannot afford to have some future Amendment, destructive of our whole theory of government, manipulated through the requisite number of legislatures, with the people standing helpless to prevent it.

The lobbyists are a kind of permanent other government.

Politics is a leading indicator.

You can't go to Washington as a congressman and a senator and expect to make a difference all at once. You have to earn your way.