Mitch McConnell Quotes

It is a pipe dream to think that that bill is going to the floor and be voted on.

In Parliament we debate on and we decide the laws that are going to govern 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.

The basic work of Congress is done in committees.

Consensus is the essence of the legislative process.

I was in the state Senate in Wyoming, and we actually legislated. We offered amendments on bills and voted on things.

The way it's supposed to work is you pass a bill out of the House, you pass a bill out of the Senate, you go to conference on it, and you iron out the differences.

You have to have patience to be a legislator.

If the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill.

It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, and Clinton passed legislation because they understood and appreciated the difficult political process. They fought for their principles yet recognized the need for compromise to get anything done.

Co-sponsoring a bill is fairly easy, like a group project which you work on with others.

Any deal that's not approved by Congress won't be accepted by Congress. Not now and certainly not in the future.

Criticism, any amount, we welcome it. Come, let's have a discussion - in Parliament, all the better.

Legislating is a very human experience in which trust and mutual respect play critical roles.

The role of the speaker of the House is to deliver enough votes by understanding and accommodating the individual bottom lines of enough members to pass the bill.

I didn't know how to pass a major piece of legislation; I didn't know how to get colleagues to support my views. It took a lot of asking for advice and learning. One of the lessons is that you have to be able to tell people why you care, and you're only going to be able to do that if you talk to someone whom an issue is affecting.

Dialogue is the essence of parliamentary politics.

If becoming a member of Congress is like going to college, then crafting legislation is our homework.

I grew up when 'Schoolhouse Rock' taught millions of American kids how a bill becomes a law.

There's a lot of work you have to do before you ever fire the starting gun on a health reform bill - doing the scut work with members of Congress, talking to your allies - to figure out the best plan.

The VA MISSION Act is one of the first bills I was fortunate enough to support and see enacted into law.

I will continue to ask the president and his subordinates to work with Congress rather than against it.

When I went up to Glasgow University in 1967, student life was dominated by 13-hour debates on Fridays, when one of the student political clubs would form the 'government' for the day and attempt to push through a piece of legislation, which the other clubs either supported or opposed.

Usually, even when a bill draws extreme opinions, there can be a process of expression and negotiation.