Congressional Powers 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.

If I could only be President and Congress too, for just 10 minutes.

In the U.S. Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House.

The interests of commerce place the principal object within the constitutional powers and care of Congress, and that it should incidentally advance the geographical knowledge of our own continent, can not but be an additional gratification

Congress has a lot of powers which people, especially those in the executive branch, don't like to talk about.

Everyone in Congress represents Washington.

What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them . . . the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers.

The United States Constitution does not one time even mention marriage. It neither requires Congress or the states to adopt same-sex marriage laws nor does it forbid them from maintaining traditional marriage laws.

When you authorised Congress to borrow money, and to contract debts, for carrying on the late war, you could not intend to abridge them of the means of paying their engagements, made on your account. You may observe that their future power is confined to provide common defence and general welfare of the United States. If they apply money to any other purposes, they exceed their powers. The people of the United States who pay, are to be judges how far their money is properly applied.

It was the separation of powers upon which the framers placed their hopes for the preservation of the people's liberties. Despite this heritage, the congress has been in too many cases more than willing to walk away from its constitutional powers.

I have found a reality in life, and that reality is the United States Congress.

The first session of the Congress of the United States under the Constitution was devoted principally to the problems of immediate revenues and administrative and judicial organization.

The Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.

Why should the president direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do? They may not be inclined to return thanks for a constitution until they have experienced that it promotes their safety and happiness. We do not yet know but they may have reason to be dissatisfied with the effects it has already produced; but whether this be so or not, it is a business with which Congress have nothing to do, it is a religious matter, and, as such is proscribed to us

Congresscritters

Our tenet ever was . . . that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action.