Legislative Manipulation Quotes

Coal and oil lobbyists added fossil fuels to a bill aimed at helping American manufacturers, so they too could claim 'manufacturing' tax deductions.

It doesn't entirely make sense that if 51 senators are from one party, and they can stick together, they can do whatever they want. Especially in this age of blatant, shameless gerrymandering.

In any single "first-class" hotel in Washington, at any time during midsession, at least half a dozen of these lobbyesses are thus at work at once, each one roping in her dozen or ten of wild-cat Congressmen. The lever of lust is used to pry up more legislators to the sticking point than money itself avails to seduce.

You think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C.

I am sick and tired of folks that are doing everything they can to try to get a bad bill going, and then they vote against it when the bad bill's got the momentum to go through. We should be doing everything, using every tool in our toolbox, to stop bad legislation from happening.

If I were a congressman who had voted for the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, I'd claim it was forced on our country by a sinister international organization.

I think it's a typical hidden agenda of the Liberal party... They had the courts do it for them, they put the judges in they wanted, then they failed to appeal -- failed to fight the case in court... I think the federal government deliberately lost this case in court and got the change to the law done through the back door.

The abuse of congressional power for pure partisan gain has become a specialty of the GOP.

True partisans draft legislation that gives themselves everything and their enemies nothing. They love bills that repulse and even disgust the other side. Today's politics have become an all-or-nothing, black-or-white, zero-sum game - it's not a contact sport but a blood sport.

The oil and gas lobby, with the vast amount of money at its disposal, is, I believe, the most diabolical influence at work in the nation's capitol. It has for years succeeded in blocking the assignment of public-spirited members to the tax-writing committees of the House and Senate, and also intervened in the election of leaders and assistant leaders in both Houses.

It matters not one iota what political party is in power or what President holds the rein of office. We are not politicians, or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all our tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connections, our purchased Senators, our hungry Congressmen, and our public-speaking demagogues, into the scale against any legislation, any political platform, any Presidential campaign that threatens the integrity of our estate.

The people are weary of detecting the voice of a corporation manager in every political utterance, in the legislature, the Governor's messages, in the expressed opinions of mayors of cities and the Senators sent by the State to Washington, and even in the decisions of judges on the bench.

Lobbying' is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy-of government by pressure groups. Its methods range from mere social courtesies and cocktail-party or luncheon "friendships" to favors, threats, bribes, blackmail.

Washington agencies are now trying a backdoor approach to regulate our climate by abusing existing laws.

Stoking fears of a potential shutdown is a strong motivational tool to get members on board with legislation that they don't want to support. Both parties are guilty of this.

When a Speaker of the House can wield such power that he can "create" a new legislative day with the flick of his gavel ..., something is wrong.

Society has to be structured such that there are checks and balances, so that it can't be manipulated, for instance, for the profit of just some multinational company who's going to get rich on trying to legislate the environment.

The Jacobins, finding themselves unable to manage their business on the questions in the House, have adopted a plan of meeting in divan and agreeing on measures to be pursued and passed in the House and then they vote in mass without admitting any alteration in the plan proposed. The wickedness of such a course has never been equalled.... [T]he spirit is intolerant and must lead to ruin.

If I do not stand for a third term the opposition will undermine all that I've achieved.

Every single dollar spent lobbying a legislator on behalf of oil and gas is a toxic dollar that undermines public health and safety laws that protect Americans. That's contamination of the political system.

This isn't a particularly novel observation, but the world is full of people who think they can manipulate the lives of others merely by getting a law passed.

Congress keeps outwitting its rules.

The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle...