Barbara Boxer Quotes

The judicial cannot prescribe to the legislative departments of the government limitations upon exercise of its acknowledged powers. The power to tax may be exercised oppressively on persons, but the responsibility … not to the courts, but to the people by whom its members are elected.

Senate: A body of elderly gentlemen charge with high duties and misdemeanors.

The most important benefit that I can confer on the country by my Presidency is to insist upon the entire independence of the executive and legislative branches of government

Congress has a lot of powers which people, especially those in the executive branch, don't like to talk about.

To call an individual from private life in order that he may preside over the interests of millions; to invest him with the various dignified functions, and the extensive patronage which appertain to a station so exalted; to secure as completely as possible, the free exercise of the people's rights; to discourage and prevent the artifices of party, and of individual ambition; and to accomplish all this by means of a fixed and practicable system which should neither be misunderstood, perverted nor resisted, was a task of no small difficulty.

The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive.

The purpose of a written constitution is to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.

Separation of powers means that the president cannot control Congress.

You run Washington DC though the House. The Senate gets in the way. The President gets in the way.

For 22 years [as a Senator] I worried about all the power at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Now [as Treasury Secretary] I worry about all the power at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The respect of the American people for the Congress has been increased. They can see the Congress as a vigilant Congress.

I am not responsible to the Senate and will not submit my actions to them.

The framers of the Constitution did not entrust this House with the power to impeach the President of the United States in order to establish this body as a court of personal morality.

The federal courts do not sit as an ombudsman, refereeing the disputes between the other two branches.

The Congress is getting too powerful.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

The authority of the Supreme Court must not ... be permitted to control the Congress, or the Executive, when acting in their legislative capacities.

I am well aware of what three past presidents have said, but that will not be worth five cents if the people and the Congress do not support their president now.”

No branch of government should ever be able to combine the power of the sword with the power of the purse.

The Senate is not a rubber stamp!

it would be so dangerous for the Executive in a single Person to negative a Law that the People will not accept of it.

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

I am no convert to any doctrine of the omnipotence of Congress.

It is up to Congress to see to it that its powers do not slip through its fingers

Does not the President ... submit this subject to Congress for their sanction? Does he not recognize the principle ... that no treaty is binding until we pass the laws for executing it?”