Tom Cotton Quotes

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

The Senate's role is to advise and consent. Very little advice has been sought and consent has thus been a problem.

The Senate, in my poor opinion, is little if any check, either on the President or the House of Representatives. It has not the disposition. The members of both Houses are creatures, which, though differently born, are begotten in the same way and by the same sire. They have of course the same temper. But their opposition, were they disposed to make any, would be feeble. They would easily be borne down by the other House, in which the power resides. The President can indeed do what he pleases, provided always it shall please him to please those, who lead a majority of the Representatives.

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

Democrats legislate; Republicans investigate.

Congressional Republicans have come to understand that their last, best hope of blocking bad policy from the White House is through spending bills.

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.

Advice and consent does not mean rubber stamp in the Senate.

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.

Senate: A body of elderly gentlemen charge with high duties and misdemeanors.

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 ...

The Vice President breaks ties in the Senate. In our 200 years of history there have been about 200 ties broken so you can see what an important job it is.

The Senate is not a rubber stamp!

The biggest downside [for the President] of having the other party control a branch of the Congress is its ability to use investigations and subpoenas as anvils.

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.

It's the job of the president to negotiate, but it's the job of Congress to approve.

Any president has to work with Congress.

Our responsibility is to focus on the House. The Senate's the Senate.

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

Holding Congressional hearings is the purview of the majority, and during the first years of the Obama administration, Democrats could not be bothered.

That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dust.

You need the House, you need the Senate and you need the administration. And absent one of them, you're not going to get a heck of a lot done.

Today, the most important political instrument in the hands of the opposition is the presidential veto.

The House of Representatives was not designed to sit idly by and rubberstamp every piece of legislation sent their way by the Senate, especially legislation passed on a straight party line vote under the spurious policy of reconciliation.