Mitch McConnell Quotes

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.

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.

Nobody claims that every treaty is entitled to an up or down vote. Nobody claims that every proposed law is entitled to an up or down vote. Why is a judicial nomination entitled to an up or down vote? The Constitution gives the complete power to the Senate to set its own rule.

I found, in the Senate, you can have significant impact whether you're in the minority party or the majority party, and a lot of it goes back to... that you really have to be able to count to 60.

As every newspaper reader, liberal activist, or parliamentary junkie knows, the overarching barrier to most of Obama's agenda is the abuse of the filibuster in the Senate. In fact, several of Obama's second term priorities are not ideas in search of a majority - they are majorities in search of an up-or-down vote.

I would never filibuster any President’s judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote.

I have this fear that one day there's going to be a fire in the Senate and there are only going to be 57 senators there and they’ll all die because they won't have 60 votes to allow themselves to leave the building.

It used to be in the Senate that if you were filibustering, you stood up. There was a physical dimension to it, that you - when you became exhausted you would have to leave the floor. That was the idea of the filibuster.

Let there be no reservation or doubt that I believe the Senate should vote on each and every judicial appointment made by the President of the United States and that no rule or procedure should ever stop the Senate from exercising its constitutional responsibility.

One difficulty in making the Senate work the way it was intended is that America's electorate is increasingly divided into red and blue states, with lawmakers representing just one color or the other.

Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work.

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.

For a long time in American history, people didn't even come up before the Senate. They didn't come before the Judiciary Committee, and up until about 1923, something like that.

Look, all this is about is utilizing the rules of the Senate, using a majority of the senators, to make sure that we get health reform done. We cannot wait another day.

It is plain that, when it comes to inferior officers, Congress itself can pass a law sending these nominees to the President with him having the authority to put them on the bench without the advice and consent of the Senate.

During the Obama years, the Republicans have done an unprecedented amount of stonewalling on cabinet-and-below appointees. I would also argue that their war on judicial nominees has been way beyond what went before. Really, if the president nominated God to serve on the D.C. Court of Appeals, Mitch McConnell would threaten a filibuster.

If I have to invade the sacred precincts of the White House to find out what is behind this paralysis of the Senate, I will.

The minority in the Senate has the power to prevent the majority from acting.

We have a level of obstruction and an abuse of the Senate rules that we have never had before… We have a dysfunctional Senate. Some say it’s a broken Senate.

Anybody who get easily frustrated should not be in the United States Senate. We operate by unanimous consent …. Any Senator can stop the train.

Let the filibuster be no more. Let the people decide.

If somebody feels strongly enough to be willing to stop the Senate, he should at least be required to be on the floor and explain why.

The filibuster has only been around for 2564 years.

The filibuster is the most important check on raw Presidential power.