Paul Ryan Quotes

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.

It is not the Congress's job to rubber stamp bad decisions [of the President.]

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

There is an important role for a United States senator as a check and balance on the president of the United States.

The Senate should refuse to confirm nominees who do not take Congressional power seriously.

It's not the function of Congress to do criminal investigations.

I believe Watergate shows that the system did work. Particularly the Judiciary and the Congress, and ultimately an independent prosecutor working in the Executive Branch.

Now that we have a Republican Congress, their [Republican members of Congress] job is to hold up the hands of executive departments, but they have not learned that yet. Their automatic thinking is to tear them down.

Government is not a bottom line enterprise. You can get yourself elected ... but you can't fire the legislature if they won't do what you want.

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

[Congress is] the chief aggrandizer of the Executive.

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 ...

Bureaucrats understand who their real masters are. Their real masters are not their nominal department heads. The real powers are the chairmen on Capitol Hill.

The Executive should be removed at the request of a majority of the State Legislatures

The Senate is not a rubber stamp!

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

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

The Obama administration demonstrated time and again a disturbing willingness to bypass the separation of powers and disregard Congress as a Constitutional watchdog.

Congress could always stop the President if Congress thinks that what the President has done exceeds the President's authority or is just wrong for the United States.

There are checks and balances and broad separation of powers under the Constitution. Each organ of the State, i.e. the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, must have respect for the others and not encroach into each other's domain.

The Senate Majority Leader has the unilateral ability to stand up and say, 'If you defy Congress, if you defy the Constitution, if you defy the American people, none of your nominees will be confirmed.'

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.

Congressmen take an independent oath to protect and defend the Constitution. They work with the President; they do not work for the President.

Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separated from legislative power and from executive power. If it [the power of judging] were joined to legislative power, the power over life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislature if it were joined to the executive power, the judge could have the force of an oppressor. All would be lost if the same … body of principal men … exercised these three powers

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