Patricia Ireland Quotes

The Senate is not a rubber stamp!

The Senate's role is to advise and consent. Very little advice has been sought and consent has thus been a problem.

It had better be known in the outset whether the President is the head of the government or the registering clerk of the Senate.

The Vice President breaks ties in the Senate. In our 200 years of history there have been about 200 ties broken so you can see what an important job it is.

We have to remind the people: Congress has the constitutional obligation and public responsibility to oversee these issues and the Department of Justice's operations.

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

The Executive is a co-ordinate and independent branch of the Government equally with the Senate; and I have yet to learn under what constitutional authority that branch of the Legislature has a right to require of my an account of any communication ... made to the heads of departments ...

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

As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past—to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority’s whims and the minority’s rights.

The filibuster is the most important check on raw Presidential power.

Eliminating the filibuster would eliminate the people’s voices in the Senate.

I take my 'advice and consent' duty as a U.S. senator very seriously.

It's important to remember that whatever the presidential candidates of either party say, they will have to interact with the United States Congress, particularly the Senate, when it comes to crafting policy... we play an important role. And I'm going to continue to play that role, whoever is president.

Every once in a while, the Senate seems to remember that it belongs to a coequal branch.

I wish the press were paying more attention to the erosion of the Constitution and the slippery slope that we're getting into, by giving up the right of the Congress to talk about when and how and where we go to war.

That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dust.

You might think otherwise, but it doesn't naturally follow that because a law has been passed by Congress and signed by the president, said law actually has to be implemented.

I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution.

Today, the most important political instrument in the hands of the opposition is the presidential veto.

As a member of Congress, I believe Congress must provide oversight of actions by the Executive Branch as our system of checks and balances requires.

I think that Congress' ability to reason is fully equal to that of the judiciary.

What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

The courts are truly the least dangerous of the three branches of our government.

The difference between the departments undoubtedly is, that the legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.