Dan Webster Quotes

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

First, the American legislative process isn't well suited to large and complex measures.

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.

The American political system has become so short term oriented.

The House Rules Committee is perhaps the free world's outstanding bureaucratic abomination - a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish.

Redistricting and a broken, polarized Congress have made it tough to be a moderate in Congress.

We don't need to allow any more Nancy Pelosies to wind up in Congress.

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.

Obama rammed through Obamacare legislation without a single Republican vote.

Believe it or not, there are members of Congress who actually want to govern and get stuff done. Unfortunately, there are others whose agendas and strategies serve to advance their own interests and expand their donor base.

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.

It is in the nature of the Congressional animal to be overly concerned with the backwaters of public policy and too little disposed to make hard decisions on mainstream national issues.

Why is it so hard for the Congress to do something for the public?

The special interests drive both parties to their extremes.

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.

You used to get legislation done by getting the moderates to agree. But we have no moderates now so it doesn’t get done

The middle in Congress is gone now. That is where we got most things done.

Overall, Congress is dysfunctional, partisan, and polarized, and it isn’t getting anything done. We need commissions to break out of divisive partisanship.

Washington is not the problem; the Congress is the problem.

The Republicans, specifically those of the House of Representatives, are responsible for undermining the confidence of the public that Government can help people.

Jon Tester's priorities are with the liberal, extreme minority of Democrats in the Senate unwilling to compromise. He does not have Montana's best interests in mind. He has failed to represent Montanans.

Ultimately, much of the dysfunction in Congress is due to the impact of big money, which drowns out the voices of working families and leads to the special treatment of special interests.

The Citizens United decision dramatically intensified the political gridlock in our country.

What worries me is that conservative thought is moving quickly, but we're kind of the pachyderms in Congress because things move so slowly.

I had always heard that Mitch McConnell was a master legislator and a true loyalist to this institution. But in the 18 months I've been in the Senate, what I've seen is an astonishingly limited vision for what the Senate can and should accomplish. What a waste.