Al Sharpton Quotes

If the Republicans get control back of the United States Senate, we will no longer have a check and balance on the White House, on the Republican Congress.

If you want to right-size executive power relative to the other branches of government, the best way to do that is to have a healthy Congress in which the two parties are debating, disagreeing, but also occasionally working together to pass legislation.

We all live in the moment, and we often mistakenly believe that what is true today was true always. Not so in politics, and especially in Congressional elections.

What I think is at stake in 2012, is whether the five or six strong conservatives elected to the Senate in 2010 become 10 or 12. And if that happens, it will fundamentally shift the character of the Senate. It will shift the balance.

As a member of Congress, I believe Congress must provide oversight of actions by the Executive Branch as our system of checks and balances requires.

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.

Imagine Texas as a blue state: how hard it would be to carry the presidency or gain control of the Senate.

Thank God for some Republican control of one branch of the government.

The judicial power of every well-constituted government must be coextensive with the legislative, and must be capable of deciding every judicial question which grows out of the Constitution and laws.

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.

Political candidates are always looking to capture the future.

The pendulum does swing in the congressional picture.

A party of order and stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past—to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority’s whims and the minority’s rights.

One of my goals, is to make the House co-equal with the White House.

Our governmental good fortune does not lie in any surrender at either end of the Avenue.

The very existence of a bicameral legislature is itself another defense of the status quo.

In republics the executive must be strongest because everything conspires against it, while in monarchies the legislature must be strongest, because everything conspires in favour of the monarch

It is a president's constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate's constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent.

There's value in checks and balances. And there's value in having independence in the governor's office with respect to the legislature.

There is an important role for a United States senator as a check and balance on the president of the United States.

Perhaps America works like this: Presidencies swing, as reactions to each other, like a pendulum. My optimistic belief is it is how we keep our country in balance.

If Congress were to censure, fine or otherwise try to punish a president, it would dramatically alter the balance of power between the branches.

Our system of government is one of checks and balances. It requires compromise.. compromise between the Executive and the Parliament, compromise between one House and another, compromise between the States and the Commonwealth and compromise between groups of persons with legitimate interests and other groups with other legitimate interests. There is room for compromise.. indeed demand for it.. in a system of checks and balances.

Now the Democrats control the Senate. But the good news is that now the Republicans can admit that Strom Thurmond has been dead since 1988.