Patrick Leahy Quotes

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

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

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

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.

I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that's just not the way the Constitution is written.

The Congress is getting too powerful.

The independence of the legislative arm must be respected. I had little taste for forcing Congressional action.

A committee of the Senate ought to confer with a committee of the President through a head of a department and not with the Chief Magistrate, for in the latter case a committee of that House is equal to the President.

It is up to Congress to see to it that its powers do not slip through its fingers

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

I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won.

Joint hearings ... destroy the check and balance that we have by having a House and Senate act independently.

We all went up to Washington on a mission to change things. What I found is that the Founding Fathers set it up where it's a little more difficult to do. We've got the Senate and the president to deal with.

Any president has to work with Congress.

I will continue to ask the president and his subordinates to work with Congress rather than against it.

Someday a political genius will come along and make the Senate work.

On form of government, there should be checks and balances, and PM should be responsible to Parliament.

It is provided by the Constitution that the President shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

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.

The jam is moving toward the Capitol where Congress sits in judgment on all the administrative agencies of Government.

I disapproved from the first moment... the want of a bill of rights to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government …

The President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude; and Congress itself is powerless to invade it.

The imperial Presidency requires a passive Congress.

If we in Congress cannot in time of war regulate the behavior of our troops, then we have no power.

For 22 years [as a Senator] I worried about all the power at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Now [as Treasury Secretary] I worry about all the power at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.