Congressional Procedure Quotes

Holding Congressional hearings is the purview of the majority, and during the first years of the Obama administration, Democrats could not be bothered.

I don't think anybody, regardless of tragic circumstances, can expect to come to a congressional hearing and take it over with a series of interruptions.

What do members of Congress say to each other every Wednesday? Have a nice weekend!

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

Our whole system was to settle disputes within the [congressional] committees. It's a waste of time to bring out a bill if you can't pass it. I just don't like to have a record vote for the sake of having a vote.

My Republican friends are lamenting reconciliation. But I would recommend for them to go back and look at history.

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

What I find is most people have a civics book understanding for how Congress works and how a bill moves.

A majority of senators should be able to adopt rules at the beginning of each Congress.

Historically, the responsibility for voting on the debt limit has gone to the party in the majority.

I think, from the broad political spectrum, not just the Freedom Caucus, I think there is a need for internal reform that is how we bring bills up, getting back to regular order, how we offer amendments or don't offer amendments.

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.

Students of American history will recall that the important place where work gets done in the legislative body, almost without exception, is in the committees, more so than on the floor although sometimes more attention is paid to the floor.

The way it's supposed to work is you pass a bill out of the House, you pass a bill out of the Senate, you go to conference on it, and you iron out the differences.

I am a U.S. senator from North Carolina. I'm worried about doing the business on the Capitol Hill. I'm not going to get into the parlor games and the political discussions about a separate and co-equal branch.

The floor of the U.S. Senate isn't a place that usually sees a lot of drama.

The traditions and courtesies of the Senators and Representatives stand in the way of the Executive, however, as defined by the Constitution, and no man who is trained in the congressional school fails to suffer by them in a way that men of merely executive experience know nothing of.

All one has to do to get one's stuff in the Congressional Record is to find a stenographer that can stay awake long enough to take it down. Then you mark in the 'Applause' and 'Laughter' parts yourself.

We must remember that in the House, Congressman [Carlos] Curbelo has a - the same law, and it has a lot of support in the House. It's possible that it will happen first in the House and then go to the Senate.

I ask unanimous consent that I be able to deliver a floor speech on immigration reform in Spanish.

The filibuster is used more aggressively, so I think doing each individual appropriations bill through regular order would be a home run. But I think that we should try to hit a few singles.

The Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.

Congress keeps outwitting its rules.

Especially in the whip operation, you're in constant contact with the members and their chiefs of staff, so having a chief who's approachable and reaches out to other chiefs so people know what's going - know what they're looking for in the policy that comes to the House floor - is incredibly important.