Kristen Soltis Anderson Quotes

His Republican Party had filibustered more bills in the Senate then had been done previously in all of the Senate History together. Congress passed fewer bills in his first two years than any other Congress in history.

At the time, the Republicans held the House of Representatives, but not the Senate or the Presidency. By popular vote, even the House elections had the majority voting for the Democrats, but the gerrymandering gave the Republicans more seats. A minority of the minority Republicans were Tea Party Republicans—ultra conservatives who would not compromise but who intimidated other Republicans by threatening to run candidates against them in primary elections. The result was that the Tea Party Republicans—a minority of the minority could block almost any legislation and did. That Congress passed less legislation than any in American history including the “Do Nothing Congress” of the Truman era.

Referring to the Senate's right to ratify treaties and the effect on negotiations,

This was one of the most remarkable statements made by a Congressional leader. At the time, the Congress was in the midst of one of the worst stalemates in American Political History. The national debt limit had to be raised in order to legally pay for the expenses that the Congress had voted for and the President had approved. A minority of the House—the Tea Party--tried to use the necessary legislation to get a program of theirs legislated when they did not have the votes to pass it in both houses of Congress. The House would not approve any solution that the Senate would pass, and the Senate would not pass any of the House proposals. The Boenner and the President had reached a compromise but the minority of his own party refused to go along and threatened to oust the Speaker and not vote for the Compromise. To them, compromise was surrender and doing business as usual. At the same time, the left wing of the President’s party did not want to vote for the Compromise plan that the President and the Speaker had worked out. Then the Minority Leader of the Senate, create a new plan that would transcend solve the immediate problem and defer the larger issues which would continue to be debated. The Senate Majority Leader agreed to go along with it and so did the President, but the Minority Leader’s fellow Republicans in the House refused to vote for that compromise. The President and then Boenner went on national television sequentially to explain the situation and the Speaker made this famous quotation, Boenner, we caught in an impossible situation. His Tea Party faction insisted that there need not be a stalemate. The President and the Senate needed the debt limit raised and they would have to give in and vote for the Tea Party plan. Almost all of the Tea Party members were new to Congress and Bonner realized that an entire party who controlled the Senate would never be blackmailed that way, and even if they did, the President would Veto. Yet his own deputy was preferred by the Tea Party and some others, so if Boenner tried to act statesman like, he was risking his speakership. So he became the spokesperson of the Tea Party wing and denied what 90 percent of all Americans knew to be true. Usually absurd statements clearly contrary to the facts at the time are the results of mistakes or gaffs. Occasionally, a more complex situation explains it.

In the early years of the Obama Administration, the minority leader of the Senate declared that the object of the Republicans in the Senate was to prevent Obama from being reelected. Therefore, the Republicans used the filibuster to block virtually all legislation. In 2010, the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives and would not pass any legislation that the President favored lest he get credit for accomplishing something. It had gotten so bad, that even when the President proposed Republican ideas about which everyone agreed, that too was blocked.