Carl B. Albert Quotes
Leave me alone. I'm Carl Albert, Speaker of the House ... I just got you raises.
The speaker, allegedly drunk, had crashed his car into two others in Georgetown. At the time, the Congress controlled such things as salaries of Washington civil servants.
Carl B. Albert, 1908-2000, U. S. Congressman (Democrat, OK), Speaker of the House, Statement to Washington police officers, September 1972
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The Chairmen of the Committees then had tremendous, almost unilateral power. The chairman reached seniority by being elected over and over and had little opposition. At the time they were almost all older Democratic Congressmen from the "Solid South", very conservative and still racists despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They were outraged when a Freshmen member of Congress who rarely made a public statement, took on the most powerful members of the House and wanted to reform the Seniority. But Ms. Chisholm was a teacher in her professional life, and by challenging the seniority system and attracting the enmity of most of the Chairmen, the media and the public started to cover the dispute and Chisholm explained to America exactly how the system worked and how undemocratic and racist it was. Her effort put the Seniority System on the public agenda, and reforms evolved over the next decades." She was the first Black woman to be elected to Congress and was the first Black woman to actively campaign for the Presidency
His main reason for believing this is that all appropriations bills must be initiated by the House of Representatives. Lobbyists therefore often give the House more attention than the Senate.
Abramoff had bribed over 100 Congressional offices by a combination of campaign donations, paid golf junkets all over the world, free elegant meals at his own fancy Washington Restaurant, free tickets for the Congressmen, their staffs and their major constituents, to Concerts and sporting events including his own Skyboxes, and promises of future employment at very high salaries. Ironically, we was convicted of cheating some of his lobbying clients and did a jail term, but his “bribery” was technically usually legal. In addition to Abramoff, only one Congressman was charged and convicted of corruption, when many if not most had engaged in these corrupt practices. Congress makes the rules with loopholes so that what is bribery and corruption in any other setting is often not against the law if Congress is involved.
The 2014 House of Representatives was probably the worst in American History. The Republican Speaker of the House did not have any control over the Tea Party wing of his caucus, but they controlled him in most instances. Even when he made bargains with the President and the Democrats, he could not get his caucus to go along. Almost no legislation was passed and the few bills that were passed were symbolic, were never considered by the Senate and the President did not even have to exercise his power of veto during that Congress.
Carl Bert Albert was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 46th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977 and represented Oklahoma's 3rd congressional district as a Democrat from 1947 to 1977.
