Phil Jones Quotes

The imperial Presidency requires a passive Congress.

Foreign policy is always a sticking point between Congress and 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.”

Congress is always looking for occasions to differ from the President.

Does not the President ... submit this subject to Congress for their sanction? Does he not recognize the principle ... that no treaty is binding until we pass the laws for executing it?”

All presidents get frustrated with Congress.

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

For 22 years [as a Senator] I worried about all the power at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Now [as Treasury Secretary] I worry about all the power at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Getting members of Congress to do things they don’t want to do is a crucial part of being President.

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 office of the President is not such a very difficult one to fill, his duties being mainly to execute the laws of Congress. Should I be chosen for this exalted position, I would execute the laws of Congress as faithfully as I have always executed the orders of my superiors.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

A committee of the Senate ought to confer with a committee of the President through a head of a department and not with the Chief Magistrate, for in the latter case a committee of that House is equal to the President.

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.

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.

The Mexican-American War had been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States

From time to time we must remind ourselves that the President has a role in the legislative process.

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.

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.

The White House staff [under Richard Nixon] viewed Congress in much the same way that the chairman of the board of a huge corporation regards his regional sales managers.

We are all the President's men.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

Unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense, the vessel, being disabled from committing further hostilities, was liberated with its crew. The Legislature will doubtless consider whether, by authorizing measures of offense also, they will place our force on an equal footing with that of its adversaries.

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.