Chester A. Arthur Quotes

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

The political status legislation which emerged in Congress in 1990 and 1991 did not receive the support needed for enactment into law during my tenure as Attorney General.

When I embarked in the government, it was with a determination to intermeddle not at all with the legislature.

If you think of big, legislative accomplishments, most of them kind of get initiated with the president putting something out there and Congress working on it.

Separation of powers means that the president cannot control Congress.

Congress is the great enabler, constitutionally, for progressive society, and it's the great graveyard, the way it's been behaving, against a prosperous society, or another billionaire or two.

I am Congress; I'm president.

I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution.

If the president is failing to disclose material facts with regard to legislation being presented to the Congress on a question as important as war and peace, I think it does impair the level of trust that the House and the Senate have for this administration.

I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that's just not the way the Constitution is written.

The jam is moving toward the Capitol where Congress sits in judgment on all the administrative agencies of Government.

It was settled by the Constitution, the laws, and the whole practice of the government that the entire executive power is vested in the President of the United States.

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

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.

The employment had no reference whatever to anything pending in Congress.

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

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.

There’s a sausage machine on Capitol Hill. We’ve given the sausage machine the right kind of ingredients. Now it’s up to the sausage machine to turn out the right kind of legislation.

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.

I don’t know if President (George W.) Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making.

The traditions and courtesies of the Senators and Representatives stand in the way of the Executive, however, as defined by the Constitution, and no man who is trained in the congressional school fails to suffer by them in a way that men of merely executive experience know nothing of.

The President sets the policies and Congress does not. Our lawmakers in Washington ratify and implement what the President wants, but if he is a strong leader and can hold his own party together, even with the majority of the opposition against him he usually can win over enough members of Congress to carry what legislation he really feels is essential.

The Presidency is the vital center of action in America.

At present the direction of our affairs, foreign and domestic, has again come to be almost wholly in the hands of the Senate, because there are in the Senate a few courageous men who have dared to take control from the Executive.

The veto is a President’s Constitutional right, given to him by the drafters of the Constitution because they wanted it as a check against irresponsible Congressional action. The veto forces Congress to take another look at legislation that has been passed.