Carl Levin Quotes

I don't know anyone who voted today [in the Senate] who knew what he was voting on.

I love serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, and I have especially enjoyed my time on the Ways and Means Committee.

When I first arrived, I likened Congress to being back in school again as a freshman. Well, just like school, we have an 'August recess,' but don't let the name fool you - it's not even close to a vacation.

Comprehensive immigration reform should be debated and passed by Congress.

If becoming a member of Congress is like going to college, then crafting legislation is our homework.

The floor of the U.S. Senate isn't a place that usually sees a lot of drama.

I firmly believe the Senate should see more voting and debate and less standing around and waiting for backroom deals.

I believe there should be political consequences for politicians who commit voter suppression.

By vesting in the House the 'sole Power of Impeachment,' the Constitution makes it wholly the House's business how to decide whether to impeach a president.

The Senate is where the issues are, and most people there are career politicians.

I am a U.S. senator from North Carolina. I'm worried about doing the business on the Capitol Hill. I'm not going to get into the parlor games and the political discussions about a separate and co-equal branch.

To be clear, impeachment is above all else a political act.

At certain moments, both the WEEE Act and the First Step Act appeared doomed to dead end in partisan gridlock and procedural hurdles.

Rather than negotiating yet another continuing resolution at the last minute, the appropriations process should work as it was originally designed, with appropriations bills passing the House and the Senate and being signed into law by the president, after robust debate, with a process for amendments.

The last thing I saw Gabrielle Giffords do on the floor of the House of Representatives was to line up like the rest of us and read a part of the Constitution. And unbeknownst to her, when she got to the well, her part was the First Amendment.

It is amazing how soon one becomes accustomed to the sound of ones voice, when forced to repeat a speech five or six times a day. As election day approaches, the size of the crowds grows; they are more responsive and more interested; and one derives a certain exhilaration from that which, only a few weeks before, was intensely painful. This is one possible explanation of unlimited debate in the Senate.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (and fast-track authority to whisk it through Congress without debate) is fast approaching. If you haven't seen our video about it, please watch. If you have, please share. And mobilize and organize friends and colleagues to call their senators and representatives to tell them to vote against this reprehensible deal.

It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were distasteful to me.

I am very pleased it has all been resolved. I wanted to stay at the club and they wanted me too, there was never a problem. There were only a few small matters to sort out.

I am for . . . each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.

One of the reasons I thought a censure resolution was appropriate was because if somebody had censured Nixon or even if a resolution of either house had passed, saying what you're doing is unacceptable to Congress, that shot across the bow might have straightened him up.

I am for the people of the whole nation doing just as they please in all matters which concern the whole nation; for that of each part doing just as they choose in all matters which concern no other part; and for each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.

To get Congress to do anything.

Nothing gets done (in Congress) unless it's bipartisan. And the reason that matters is that it's a function of reality.

QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. In the U.S. Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House.