Jay Leno Quotes

One reason the Founding Fathers thought that states should have two senators was so that smaller states wouldn't get run over and could bring their interests to the attention of the Senate more broadly.

What other influence over, or check upon the General Government. will the States possess, if their Legislatures do not elect the Senate or second Branch of the National. Government.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.

Our Founding Fathers created the United States Senate for the purpose of protecting the rights of the minority.

We are a Republic with different branches of government, and so the Senate and the House are going to be full partners in working with the White House.

The Senate is a remarkable institution. It is unique. There is no other body, no other political body, no other democratic legislature in the world quite like the U.S. Senate.

You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a President.

It was evidently necessary to infuse a greater portion of strength into the national government. But Congress were but a single body, with whom it was dangerous to lodge additional powers. Hence arose the necessity of a different organization. In order to form some balance, the departments of government were separated, and as a necessary check, the legislative body was composed of two branches. Steadiness and wisdom are better insured when there is a second branch, to balance and check the first The stability of the laws will be greater when the popular branch, which might be influenced by local views, or the violence of party, is checked by another, whose longer continuance in office will render them more experienced, more temperate, and more competent to decide rightly.

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.

Washington would be much better off if it looked more like a state legislature.

The Senate was an odd compromise between the founders and the early leaders of the republic who wanted a single house which was based on popular sovereignty representing the people and those founders who wanted two houses, the upper house, the Senate, being the more aristocratic.

There was a Republican majority of the Senate, and it tempered the nature of the nominations being made.

Some of them, in accepting the proposed plan of government, coupled their acceptance with a recommendation of various additions to the Constitution, which they deemed essential to the preservation of the rights of the States, or of the People.

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that's just not what the founders intended.

The United States Senate wasn't designed to be a majority-rule institution. It was designed to include and accommodate the rights of the minority in small states as well as large states.

Do you think states' rights would have disappeared if state legislatures still elected our United States senators? Do you think our United States senators would be difficult to contact if they were named by our state legislatures?

In our Constitution governmental power is divided among three separate branches of the national government, three separate branches of State governments, and the peoples of the several States.

For six years the senators are rendered totally and absolutely independent of their States, of whom they ought to be the representatives, without any bond or tie between them: During that time they may join in measures ruinous and destructive to their States, even such as should totally annihilate their State governments, and their States cannot recall them, nor exercise any controul over them.

If you are a United States senator and are not under indictment or in detoxification, you automatically consider yourself as a potential candidate for the Presidency.

The Senate of the United States has been both extravagantly praised and unreasonably disparaged, according to the predisposition and temper of its various critics…. The truth is, in this case as in so many others, something quite commonplace and practical. The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it.

The republic has been structured to guard against the cabals of a few as well as against confusion of a multitude, but how each House of Congress would maintain that balance was left to the discretion of the two bodies.

Is it best to put the pseudo-aristoi (of wealth and birth) into a separate chamber of legislation, where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people? I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively... Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation to protect themselves

The House of Representatives is the center of power of the most powerful nation in the world.

Our American concept of government rests on the idea of a dominant Congress.

Our President is not a King, nor our senate a House of Lords.