William S. Cohen Quotes

We have not found a way to give Congress control without depriving the President of essential power.

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

Separation of powers means that the president cannot control Congress.

Congressional power has not so much been usurped by the Presidency as given up to the Presidency by Congress.

The powers that are surrendered [by Congress] to one President remain to be used by others.

[Congress is] the chief aggrandizer of the Executive.

The power to make war is vested in Congress and not in the President. Congress has no constitutional authority to grant such authority to the president.

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

If I could only be President and Congress too, for just 10 minutes.

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

The respective powers of the President and Congress of the United States, in the case of war with foreign powers are yet undetermined. Perhaps they can never be defined.

Federal bureaucracies are creatures of Congress, not the executive.

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

If our forefathers had wanted Congress to be the Commander in Chief, they would have said so.

The authority of Congress must be respected …. The President must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws.

I do not believe that we [Congress] should allow him [the President] to nullify acts of Congress by executive fiat. There is not one syllable in the Constitution which authorizes the President to exercise such power.

The President ... should be merely the executor of a power of decision that rests elsewhere; that is, in the Congress.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

What a President says and thinks is not worth five cents unless he has the people and Congress behind him. Without the Congress I'm just a six-feet-four Texan. With the Congress I'm President of the United States in the fullest sense.

The Constitution provided an invitation to the President and Congress to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.

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.

Every American war has brought a struggle between Congress and the Executive over war powers. The Constitution is somewhat annoyingly ambiguous on the point declaring that the President is Commander in Chief but empowering Congress to provide for the common defense, declare war, and raise and support armies.

Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.

Most Americans look upon the President as superior to the Congress and the Supreme Court, about whose powers and functions they know very little;

The president today is the seat of all power.