Dan Quayle Quotes
The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.
Quayle, Dan. Remarks to reporters. 1989.
They were discussing the Civil Right Bill of 1964 which they all wanted to pass. See {605438} . However, they faced a filibuster from the Southern Senators who had always before used this tactic and blocked Civil Rights legislation. However, the President here committed himself to the one way to take most of the power out of the filibuster. Accept a shutdown of the Senate, give up the rest of the President’s legislative program but the filibuster blocks all legislation that the Southerners wanted like cotton and tobacco subsidies.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
In one of the most blatant statements of the arbitrary power of congressional committee chairmen, the chairman of the House Rules Committee blocked an investigation of military procurement even though every other member of the committee wanted to pursue the investigation. The prerogative of the chairman was upheld by the Speaker, and on appeal, by the House as a whole, but by 1924 House rules were amended to diminish the arbitrary power of chairmen.
Churchill's first government job was as Undersecretary of the Colonies. Shortly after his appointment he observed:
James Danforth Quayle is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 44th vice president of the United States from 1989 to 1993, a U.S. representative from 1977 to 1981 and a U.S. senator from Indiana from 1981 to 1989.
