Congressional Inefficiency Quotes

Congress is almost totally dysfunctional right now. All we've done this year and my first year in the Senate ... is barely keep the doors open.

Well, Congress gave us a billion dollars to dig the hole, this gigantic hole. Bigger, much bigger than the hole in Geneva, Switzerland. Then they canceled the machine and gave us a second billion dollars to fill up the hole. Two billion dollars to dig a hole and fill it up. That is the wisdom of the United States Congress and it really makes you wonder: Is there intelligent life on the Earth? Certainly not in the United States Congress.

Many good people serve in Congress. They are patriotic, hard-working, and devoted to the public good as they see it, but the institutional and cultural impediments to change frustrate the intentions of these well-meaning people as rarely before.

Everybody hates Congress; even Congress hates Congress.

Talking heads will chatter, argue, and rant on TV and in the houses of Congress but that's all they will do. Weeks and months will go by in which the crowning achievement of Congress may be little more than perhaps passing a bill to declare National Eat Your Spinach Week (sponsored, of course, by the Spinach Growers of America).

Some fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.

Congressional sloth in recent years has hit mind-boggling new lows. It’s partly systemic, rooted in a mandatory spending regime that accounts for two-thirds of government dollars and runs on autopilot. That disconnect now imbues every aspect of governance. In the nearly 50 years since Congress created our current system of budgeting and appropriations, it’s managed to complete the process correctly four times. It last did so 25 years ago. The default is massive omnibus bills that are passed hours after release, minutes before the government shuts down for lack of funds.

Congress is more broken than ever. Congressman Will Hurd has quickly become part of the problem.

There is no getting around it; Congress is failing the American people.

In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them.

Washington is not the problem; the Congress is the problem.

In the United States Senate we have to break the culture of procrastination.

One of the reasons Americans hold Washington in such low regard is the perception that nothing ever gets done. Whatever the issue - no matter how urgent - they always seem to be 'working on it.'

How many times will this Congress waste time on an issue that a majority of Americans do not want?

My viewpoint is the Senate is dysfunctional.

It is safe to say that the U.S. Congress is now run by paid staffers, not by people elected to do the job.

I understand why so many Americans are fed up with government. The 112th Congress was almost universally derided as the worst ever. It was the most polarized body since the end of Reconstruction, according to one study, and I grew embarrassed by its partisan bickering, inactivity, and refusal to address the vital challenges facing America.

We go on in Congress as when you left us …. Resolves have been passed upon Resolves--and letter after letter has been sent to the deficient States, and all without the desired effect. We are without money or the prospect of it in the Federal Treasury; and the States, many of them, care so little about the Union, that they take no measures to keep a representation in Congress.

Since I joined Congress, I've been shocked at how many times we were forced to vote on 1,000-plus-page bills without ample time to read or review what was in the final legislation. It's no wonder Congress doesn't enact good policy.

I do not sympathize with the sentiment that Congress in session is dangerous to our general business interests.

[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.