Bicameral System Quotes

The difference between being a member of the House and being a member of the Senate is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.

You have 435 people in the United States House of Representatives trying to get along.

You run Washington DC though the House. The Senate gets in the way. The President gets in the way.

Any president has to work with Congress.

Eliminating the filibuster would eliminate the people’s voices in the Senate.

Being Speaker of the House is a really tough spot.

I consider the United States Senate the greatest deliberative body in the world, and I respect the important role the Constitution affords it in the confirmation of our judges.

The Senate of the United States has been both extravagantly praised and unreasonably disparaged, according to the predisposition and temper of its various critics…. The truth is, in this case as in so many others, something quite commonplace and practical. The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it.

The Senate was designed not to be efficient. If was designed to slow things down, And it does a pretty good job of it.

Senators are a Constitutional impediment to the smooth functioning of staff.

I know well the coequal role of the Congress in our constitutional process. I love the House of Representatives. I revere the traditions of the Senate despite my too-short internship in that great body. As President, within the limits of basic principles, my motto toward the Congress is communication, conciliation, compromise, and cooperation.

The Senate's role is to advise and consent. Very little advice has been sought and consent has thus been a problem.

I like the House. The House is where you can effect the most change. It's such a fast-moving dynamic body compared to the Senate.

From time to time we must remind ourselves that the President has a role in the legislative process.

Senate: A body of elderly gentlemen charge with high duties and misdemeanors.

Congress is a collection of committees that come together in a Chamber periodically to approve one another's actions.

About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.

Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there's no hierarchy.

It's important to remember that whatever the presidential candidates of either party say, they will have to interact with the United States Congress, particularly the Senate, when it comes to crafting policy... we play an important role. And I'm going to continue to play that role, whoever is president.

The Senate is indeed a deliberative body, and that quality serves the nation well. A slow-moving government helps us maintain a stable government. But slow moving is not the same as immobile.

It's the job of the president to negotiate, but it's the job of Congress to approve.

The Senate is a remarkable institution. It is unique. There is no other body, no other political body, no other democratic legislature in the world quite like the U.S. Senate.

The traditional role of the Senate has been to be the adult in the room.

We [Congress] are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important. […] That’s not how we were meant to govern. Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise.

First, the American legislative process isn't well suited to large and complex measures.