Congressional Behavior Quotes

There's a rising level of frustration with the disconnect between where the vast majority of conservatives are in this country and how Congress is behaving. There's going to be a wake-up call sooner or later.

Congress is good at two things: Doing nothing and over-reacting.

It’s just a fact of life that Congressmen vote on bills that they have never even read..

Overreaction is one of the things that congress specializes in. I can't think of anything congress does better than overreact.

Some members of Congress ought to have their mouths taped instead of their speeches.

American voters should understand that Congress will always find a way to spend every last dollar sent to Washington.

The reality of going before the voters and seeking election should force Congressmen to behave.

During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.

There is hardly a member of Congress who can make up his mind to go home without having dispatched at least one speech to his constituents; nor who will endure any interruption until he has introduced into his harangue whatever useful suggestions may be made touching the four-and-twenty States of which the Union is composed, and especially the district which he represents.

The choreographed standing and clapping of one side of the room - while the other side sits - is unbecoming of a serious institution and the message that it sends is that even on a night when the president is addressing the entire nation, we in Congress cannot sit as one, but must be divided as two.

Congress actively undermines the best of legislative practice.

Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.

This notion that members of Congress are power-hungry—absolutely the opposite. Most members like to duck tough issues.

The Congress of the United States, taken collectively, is a very timid body of men, composed individually of many highly intelligent, honest and industrious members who rarely have the courage to march in a body in advance of public sentiment or of the declared sentiment of their immediate constituencies.

The usually travelled route for a great many Members of the last Congress was an exceedingly crooked one, even for politicians.

I would be embarrassed to tell you how many folks ran saying that they weren't going to spend a bunch of money, they weren't going to raise the debt ceiling, and then they went to Washington, D.C., and did exactly that.

There used to be a civility. Today, members of Congress would rather destroy another member than compromise.

There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress than I had any conception of, before I became President of the U.S.

[Describing Congress:] We generally lounge or squabble the greater part of the session, and crowd into a few days of the last of the term three or four times the business done during as many preceding months.

It is in the nature of the Congressional animal to be overly concerned with the backwaters of public policy and too little disposed to make hard decisions on mainstream national issues.