John M. McHugh Quotes

The way it's supposed to work is you pass a bill out of the House, you pass a bill out of the Senate, you go to conference on it, and you iron out the differences.

Getting something through the House is only half the battle. So you put things in the House bill that you know will be taken out in conference and you leave things out of the House bill that will be in the Senate bill. It's like a chess game.

I want to have a good vote in the Senate so we send the message that the Republicans and the Democrats are together in favor of immigration reform.

In the Senate, where 60 votes are required to do anything important, you have to work with your colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

I like the House. The House is where you can effect the most change. It's such a fast-moving dynamic body compared to the Senate.

I find it very difficult to see a scenario where financial regulation doesn't pass the Senate.

F.D.R. had an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions in 1933 when he drove 15 major bills through the Congress, and super majorities in the House and the Senate in 1935 when he won passage of Social Security.

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.

Many times, the Senate talks of things and never gets anything through.

If you go through the regular process of the House and Senate passing companion bills and then try and work out differences in the conference, maybe we can get something done.

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.

One of the reasons that the Senate was structured and founded the way it is, as opposed to the House, it was designed for gridlock. It was designed to stop massive new laws being passed and voted on daily. It was designed to stop the growth of government.

Our Keystone legislation received strong bipartisan support in the Senate. Although it didn't receive the 60 votes necessary for passage, 56 senators - a majority - voted in favor of the bill. Despite President Obama's actively lobbying against the bill, we still won the support of 11 Democrats.

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.

Tom Daschle and I worked together on Families First every step of the way, making sure that Democrats in both the House and Senate were involved in putting the agenda together.

The House of Representatives eliminated the filibuster way back in the 19th century, and somehow it managed to survive.

We've passed an energy bill in the House, to help us be less reliant upon foreign oil so we can get gas prices down. But nothing happens in the Senate.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

Reparations, I believe, are talked about for political reasons, trying to cater for the purpose of getting votes. If Congress was serious about reparations - in '93 and '94 the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House, and not one single Republican vote was needed for reparations.

How many crossbreeds between a great dane and a chuwawa have you seen? Likewise there is great difficulty with a House -- Senate conference.

Is it best to put the pseudo-aristoi (of wealth and birth) into a separate chamber of legislation, where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people? I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively... Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation to protect themselves

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

In the course of time, each committee is to a large degree co-opted by a department of government ... The committee becomes an advocate of the program over which it has authority, and goes to the House of the Senate as an advocate.

The difference between being a member of the House and being a member of the Senate is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.

... one of the most vicious, most dangerous pieces of legislation against the people that has ever been passed by any Senate.