Legislative Debate Quotes

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process.

A republican stands up in congress and says 'I GOT A REALLY BAD IDEA!!' and the democrat stands up after him and says 'AND I CAN MAKE IT SHITTIER!!

Dialogue is the essence of parliamentary politics.

What is the value of bringing a bill to the floor without the members having an opportunity to read it.

I read where they are going to limit debate in the Senate. It used to be that a man could talk all day, but now, as soon as he tells all he knows, he has to sit down. Most of these birds will just be getting up and nodding now. Why, some of them won't be able to answer roll call.

I was in the state Senate in Wyoming, and we actually legislated. We offered amendments on bills and voted on things.

I'm a typical Maryland legislator. I've voted both ways on the issue.

When Sir Winton Turnbull [who represented a large rural seat], a slow and sometimes stumbling speaker, was raving and ranting on the adjournment and shouted: "I am a Country member." I interjected "I remember." Sir Winton could not understand why, for the first time in all the years he had been speaking in the House, there was instant and loud applause from both sides.

As debate is rare in the House of Representatives, since nearly all real business is done in the committees, it is very natural that such debate as there is should be very oratorical, should be

[Madness] happened so frequently. I think what I was most maddest about - and it's in the book [Speaking Freely: A Memoir] - when the House and the Senate, back in 1984, were debating a bill that would - at least delay and maybe stop some of the ex - summary execution of disabled children - infants. And the Down syndrome kids and other kids had been, in some cases, routinely let die, to use the euphemism.

There's a learning curve to understanding how the Senate operates.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

We mistake politics for legislative debate. You can be passionate without being personal.

When I am contradicted it arouses my attention, not my wrath. I move toward the man who contradicts me: he is instructing me. The cause of truth ought to be common to both of us.

If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin.

The idea that Parliament somehow wasn't going to be able to discuss, debate, question issues around (Brexit) was frankly completely wrong.

I've been arguing with Dianne Feinstein for years.

I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged. At the very least, we should debate. We should debate whether or not we are going to relinquish our rights, or whether or not we are going to have a full and able debate over whether or not we can live within the Constitution, or whether or not we have to go around the Constitution.

I saw, he was in a different league on a different planet. Everybody says we need substance in these debates, you've got it. You've got it from [Ted] Cruz.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'

We are successful. The New York nominations, Merritt and Burt, were confirmed against Arthur and Cornell, after five or six hours' debate by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-four.

I'm confident that Senate Republicans will put up a very strong and valiant effort to continue doing what we're united around.

There are still times when I am walking up, and I look at the Capitol, and I think, 'Oh my goodness.' Right now, I am kind of scared to go onto the floor and speak. Once I get used to it, though, they probably won't be able to keep me off there.

Anyone who has ever spent time listening to a legislature knows the astonishing speed at which all presiding officers and reading clerks can spit out the formulaic incantations of parliamentary procedure.