Steve Scalise Quotes

We need a president who is willing to uphold the law.

The President cannot refuse to enforce a law simply because he does not like it.

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it.

The question of impeaching Donald Trump is about replacing the toxic partisanship of today's Republican party with America's traditional rule of law. It has become a constitutional imperative.

The president does not have the option of choosing which laws he will follow and which he will ignore.

I believe the attorney general or the deputy attorney general has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution and to give their independent legal advice to the President.

Your memo is trumping a Congressional statute. You don't have the discretion on whether to follow the law or not.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government.

You might think otherwise, but it doesn't naturally follow that because a law has been passed by Congress and signed by the president, said law actually has to be implemented.

The rule of law should be upheld by all political parties. They should neither advise others to break the law, nor encourage others to do so even when they strongly disagree with the legislation put forward by the government of the day.

The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law.

The courts are truly the least dangerous of the three branches of our government.

Impeachment is not a Constitutional crisis. Impeachment is the cure for a Constitutional crisis.

England is the model from which impeachment has been borrowed.

The purpose of a written constitution is to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.

When the President of the United States breaks the law he must be held accountable. That is why I am introducing today a resolution to censure George W. Bush…. At the very heart of our constitution is the assumption that some members of the government will do wrong, and when they do, others in the government must do right…. The President has broken the law. Congress must act…. Our job is not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law.

Unless the courts have the power to review the legislative and executive decisions of the nation, we do not have the rule of law… If we don’t follow our own rules, our own Constitution, then, my God, what are we fighting for?

A chief executive doesn’t get to pick and choose which laws he will enforce.

The framers of the Constitution did not entrust this House with the power to impeach the President of the United States in order to establish this body as a court of personal morality.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

The Executive is a co-ordinate and independent branch of the Government equally with the Senate; and I have yet to learn under what constitutional authority that branch of the Legislature has a right to require of my an account of any communication ... made to the heads of departments ...

The legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.

All constitutional laws are binding on all the people, in the new States and in the old ones, whether they consent to be bound by them or not.

The Founding Fathers wisely concluded that it was not enough for the President to swear to obey the law. He had to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," which means by his appointees and subordinates.