Tom Graves Quotes

Here's where I'm different from a senator. We pass continuing resolutions. We pass appropriations bills.

We're not even supposed to have a break in August if we have not passed the appropriations bills. It's in the House rules.

While the budget resolution is a nonbinding blueprint, it is, nevertheless, an important guideline for Congress. Once the President's proposed budget is received by Congress on the first Monday of February, Congress generally goes to work on appropriating the funds required.

One of the most important tasks of the United States House of Representatives is to pass a budget resolution.

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

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

For me, appropriations bills are the glue. These are the bills that must move, no matter what, to keep the government functioning as a reliable element of our society. The Appropriations Committee shouldn't be the most political place to be; it's the place where we have to make the institution function for the country.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Federal appropriations process is a marathon, not a sprint, and we are at the beginning of that process.

Sequestration, sequestation - however you pronounce that word - and gridlock aren't all that bad.

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.

Clinton passed his first budget without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Before it led to the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, it led to a Democratic defeat in the 1994 midterms.

We know the Constitution gives the purse strings to the House.

To be honest, I haven't seen much serious budget planning since the Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 elections and grabbed onto the Senate filibuster. It's not the White House's fault that John Boehner couldn't deliver on a bigger deal.

The federal government is currently operating on a budget passed in the dead of night just before Christmas. It comprised three massive documents, ran to a staggering 3,296 pages, weighed in at a hefty 43 pounds, and had a price tag of $650 billion. Congress had about three hours to look at it before voting on it.

You can't have your own way in Congress.

I can’t come up here each year to the legislature and beg for money.

What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by 5 to 4 Supreme Court judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the States to equal 5 judges.

It is … not unconstitutional for the House of Representatives to refuse to fund the government, or for the Senate to deny confirmation to all presidential nominees. But since only the House can originate money bills, and only the Senate can confirm nominees, the system cannot tolerate such intransigence for long.

So in the House and Senate, we own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill.