Government Gridlock Quotes

The House Republicans are not the enemy, they’re the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.

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.

But when I look at the fact that today is 1,000 days that we have not had a budget for the United States of America, you know, the House, one of the things we did, we passed a budget last year. But that is still sitting over there at the Senate. And so we have got to get this country back on track.

The Founders didn't mention political parties when they wrote the Constitution, and George Washington in essence warned us against them in his Farewell Address.

The public good is being compromised in the conflicts between our rival political parties.

I know something. America is not broken, Washington, D.C. is broken.

I worked for President Bush and President Obama. I had Democratic bosses and Republican bosses. I believe in order to actually get things done, we do need to buckle down and often reach across the aisle.

I view the traditional two parties as in some ways very evil. They've become monsters that are out of control. The two parties don't have in mind what's best for Minnesota. The only things that are important to them are their own agendas and their pork. Government's become just a battle of power between the two parties.

In the absence of a crisis, the status quo in Washington is more or less set in cement, as advocacy groups and turf-conscious government officials are able to thwart change.

We already have a sabbatical system. It's called opposition, and I've had enough of it.

I cannot be any clearer, minority governments don't work.

Nobody wants a stalemate in constitutional development.

The polarization of American politics is the proximate cause of the ongoing budget deficit…. Lately, the ideological center in Congress has thinned, and the distance between the parties has widened. Compromise has come to be seen as surrender—and the U. S. Government has all but come to a halt.

It seems with every new day, we have a new veto threat from the president.

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).

It's no great secret, number one, in my view, and I think the view of most Americans, that Congress itself is pretty dysfunctional. We are not addressing the real needs of the American people. And second of all, philosophically, there is a huge division between the House and the Senate.

The last thing I will pay attention to is any of the usual Washington back and forth.

An opposition that won't oppose paralyses our political and democratic system.

To get Congress to do anything.

We're all tired of a Washington that has these partisan camps where nothing gets done.

When Trump was elected, there were three parties in Washington: the Trump party, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Congress is always looking for occasions to differ from the President.

Let me make it clear that I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won. But during the Administration of the present President we have had neither agreement nor a clear-cut battle.

As you get a changing of the guard in Washington D.C., with different people from different sectors, you'll start to break through the gridlock.

There's really a fundamental political corruption problem that put Washington completely out of touch with the people.