Mitch McConnell Quotes

It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true.

The Senate as an institution is broken. We're not doing the work of the American people and the rules are being abused. The only way to get us back to the traditions where the Senate is doing the work of the American people is to change the rules.

I was interested in political failure here in the U.S. The way we're failing to work together to solve even our smallest problems, let alone the complex ones.

We've gotten to the point now where Republicans and Democrats have nothing in common besides being members of the 'caustic caucus,' and we can't get anything done.

Incumbents are safe, but party majorities are not. This fosters symbolic votes, message politics and little serious legislating in Congress.

Everywhere I go - from Main Street to Wall Street - people ask, 'What's happened to our political system? Why can't Washington folks work together?'

The Congress is a dysfunctional institution; it's broken. One of our three branches of government is broken.

President Bush said that he wanted to change the tone in Washington. He has; it has gotten worse.

Rarely in American history has any particular Congress been held in high esteem …

We have moved toward a kind of scorpions-in-a-bottle Government where you have two branches [executive and legislative] that don't understand many of the legitimate needs of the other branch.

The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.

We have a level of obstruction and an abuse of the Senate rules that we have never had before… We have a dysfunctional Senate. Some say it’s a broken Senate.

Dear God, in mercy and grace, prevent the Senate from being like Humpty Dumpty. Keep it from being so fractured and fragmented that no one will ever be able to put it together again.

Divided government need not be dysfunctional government.

You used to get legislation done by getting the moderates to agree. But we have no moderates now so it doesn’t get done

Congress actively undermines the best of legislative practice.

The middle in Congress is gone now. That is where we got most things done.

In our political system it’s easier to block action than to act.

You come into Congress, and in the orientation, pretty quickly, you're separated out by party. Which makes no sense, if you want to get a body that works as a body, that learns to be able to work as a body.

Mitch McConnell has, as much as anyone, done great damage to the United States Senate as an institution that was once known as the world's greatest deliberative body.

The Congress has now become a fairly evenly divided entity.

While I have worked hard to bring folks to the middle to craft common-sense solutions to the many problems that confront our nation, Washington is mired in gridlock, gamesmanship and constant partisan bickering.

One difficulty in making the Senate work the way it was intended is that America's electorate is increasingly divided into red and blue states, with lawmakers representing just one color or the other.

Government is dysfunctional.

Partisanship particularly increased after the 1994 elections and then the appearance of the first unified Republican government since the 1950s.