Bicameralism Quotes

Our system of checks and balances makes it simpler to stop bills than enact them.

The Senate are a branch of the treaty-making power, and by consulting them in advance of his own action upon important measures of foreign policy which may ultimately come before them for their consideration, the President secures harmony of action between that body and himself.

We are a Republic with different branches of government, and so the Senate and the House are going to be full partners in working with the White House.

You need the House, you need the Senate and you need the administration. And absent one of them, you're not going to get a heck of a lot done.

I think dealing with the U.S. Senate is very different from dealing with the electorate.

The importance of writing in the breakdown of the bicameral voices is tremendously important. What had to be spoken is now silent and carved upon a stone to be taken in visually.

I take my 'advice and consent' duty as a U.S. senator very seriously.

The vestiges of the bicameral mind do not exist in any empty psychological space.

Canadians understand that our Senate, as it stands today, must either change or … vanish

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.

Getting something through the House is only half the battle. So you put things in the House bill that you know will be taken out in conference and you leave things out of the House bill that will be in the Senate bill. It's like a chess game.

The conference committee, that wonderful wrestling ring of compromise where House and Senate versions of bill are wrenched into law ...

Washington would be much better off if it looked more like a state legislature.

It is time to move away from advise and obstruct and get back to advise and consent.

I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of conversations between House members and Senate members on a regular basis, and I think that's what our constituents would expect, is to have bicameral conversations throughout the process.

If you go through the regular process of the House and Senate passing companion bills and then try and work out differences in the conference, maybe we can get something done.

Parliament is just like Noah’s Ark—many beasts and a few humans.

Any legislation that is passed by one political party can be reversed by the other party. The only way to produce lasting legislation in America is bipartisanship. Without it, there is no sustainablity.

It is a breach of order in debate to notice what has been said on the same subject in the other House, or the particular votes or majorities on it there, because the opinion of each house should be left to its own independency, not to be influenced by the proceedings of the other; and the quoting them might beget reflections leading to a misunderstanding between the two Houses.

The reason there are two senators for each state is so that one can be the designated driver.

Joint hearings ... destroy the check and balance that we have by having a House and Senate act independently.

It should be mandatory that any tax breaks go through appropriate committees and be voted on separately by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Our Founding Fathers created the United States Senate for the purpose of protecting the rights of the minority.

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that's just not what the founders intended.

Every once in a while, the Senate seems to remember that it belongs to a coequal branch.