Lloyd Bentsen Quotes

When I came here I thought I worked for the President. But I didn’t realize that I also worked for 534 other people at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue who all think that they are presidents.

Federal bureaucracies are creatures of Congress, not the executive.

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

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 ... is far more than the simple, limited advisory council that most Presidents would like to maintain.

[Congress is] the chief aggrandizer of the Executive.

The independence of the legislative arm must be respected. I had little taste for forcing Congressional action.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

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.”

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

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.

Separation of powers means that the president cannot control Congress.

The imperial Presidency requires a passive Congress.

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

Politically it is often much safer [for Congress] to let the executive do the leading.

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

Congress has a constitutional right to an authoritative voice in declaring and proscribing the foreign policy of the United States ... and it is the constitutional duty of the President to respect that policy ...

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

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

Without the Congress I am just a six-foot-four Texan.

Potential to alter permanently the political relationship between the President and Congress is enormous.... [It would] outmode contemporary informal negotiation processes between the political branches.

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.

Our governmental good fortune does not lie in any surrender at either end of the Avenue.

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

I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won.