John Hoeven Quotes

While we always strive to reach 218 with Republican votes, sometimes that is not possible with divided government, and the story of a bill that passed with 150 Republican votes is much more positive and assertive than the story of a bill that passes with 79 Republican votes.

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.

Our forefathers never envisioned that a handful of staff write a bill and you rush it through a committee without reading it and you rush it to the floor without reading it, and you pass it just because you're a Democrat and Democrats told you to do that.

Obama's policies have been approximately the same as Bush's, though there have been some slight differences, but that's not a great surprise. The Democrats supported Bush's policies.

The Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything. They have to compromise with liberal Democrats to spend more money. Even though arguably we have control of the Senate, we really don't.

The Senate should not be a graveyard for good ideas.

In fact, when I first came to the Senate, people laughed. I had people telling me, 'There's no way you're going to get a comprehensive criminal justice reform bill done.'

The Senate must approve any deal President Obama negotiates with Iran by a two-thirds majority vote.

The Democratic line is that the Republican House does nothing but block and oppose. In fact, it has passed hundreds of bills only to have them die upon reaching the desk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He has rendered the Senate inert by simply ensuring that any bill that might present a politically difficult vote for his Democratic colleagues never even comes to the floor.

The degree of polarization that currently exists in Washington is such where I think it's fair to say if I presented a cure for cancer, getting legislation passed to move that forward would be a nail-biter.

President Obama can talk about having no grand schemes and making no big gains, but the reality is he can't get anything of significance through Congress.

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.

If I can't negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I'm not a very good representative of my party.

One of the tragedies of the Bush administration is that we went back to business as usual, make a deal with the Democrats, let's all be friends in Washington philosophy.

So the next thing I assume I'll be hearing from Republicans, they want to change rules some way, as they do on the House when you get a problem with ethics, they just change the rules.

It is amazing that the wisdom of the chattering class to the Republicans is always, always, always 'Surrender your principles and agree with the Democrats.' That's been true for my entire lifetime.

The Democrats filibustered something in the Senate when I was eight years old. I don't remember what it was on and I didn't honestly care when I was eight years old. I cared about the history and the Senate rules.

The Senate as an institution is broken. We're not doing the work of the American people and the rules are being abused. The only way to get us back to the traditions where the Senate is doing the work of the American people is to change the rules.

Republican secretaries of state from Kissinger to Baker, Powell to Rice, President Bush, 71 United States Senators all supported President Obama's new START treaty, but not Mitt Romney.

I think there's bipartisan support in the Senate to pass a good reform bill.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said that Republicans' number one priority was the defeat of President Obama.

I never heard the word 'compromise' used. So I'm starting to believe that these terms only come into play to try and force Republicans to do what the Democrats want.

The process for producing public policy in Congress is flawed. The process itself kills policy ideas through the bypassing of the rules and procedural decisions that limit discussion.

We've seen filibusters of bills and nominations that ultimately passed with 90 or more votes. Why filibuster something that has that kind of support? Just to slow down the process and keep the Senate from working.

There is absolutely zero chance that ObamaCare will be repealed while Democrats control the Senate and President Obama is in the White House.