Legislative Reform Quotes

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election

House and Senate Republicans are now united in adopting earmark bans. We hope President Obama will follow through on his support for an earmark ban by pressing Democratic leaders to join House and Senate Republicans in taking this critical step to restore public trust.

Let the filibuster be no more. Let the people decide.

I cannot... perceive any ground for hoping that any practical good would, while the funding system exists in its present extent, result from the adoption of any of those projects, which have professed to have in view what is called Parliamentary Reform... when the funding system, from whatever cause, shall cease to operate upon civil and political liberty, there will be no need of projects for parliamentary reform. The parliament will, as far as shall be necessary, then reform itself.

We cannot always count on a severely gerrymandered legislature itself to find and implement a remedy [to gerrymandering.]

We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.

I think what Americans need and what Mainers need more than anything is government that functions and I think that the filibuster prevents us from functioning and making progress on issues.

Washington is out of control, and it's time for Texans to stand up and stop them.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

If you have to change some laws, get that done. If it's getting schools, the next generation, to understand love and understanding, let's get that done.

If people want to change the law, they should vote so that we can appoint pro-life judges. I believe the law should be changed.

Montanans elected me to the Senate to do away with shady backroom deals and to make government work better.

Stop sending out press releases and start passing some bills...

You know, you look at term limits, you poll term limits, 70, 80 percent of Republicans or Democrats are for it.

Congress should get the job done.

I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see the policy of a gradual Abolition of Slavery.

I was a crown attorney in my home town in Nova Scotia, and I learned that victims of crime needed better laws to better protect them. I saw politics as a means to improve this protection for them.

The late Sir Horace Davy introduced a Bill, which proposed that father and mother should be acknowledged equal guardians of their children. This just and logical reform secured only nineteen votes in the House of Commons.

We have promised to do better, and no Republican concern should ever be enough to filibuster our own bill.

I want to be at least part of the change in Congress.

I took the repeal of the Corn Laws as light amusement compared with the difficult task of inducing the priests of all denominations to agree to suffer the people to be educated.

If they won’t listen, we should limit the Politicians’ terms and send them packing..

I've been not only articulating the dissatisfaction with Albany, I've been acting on it. I've been very aggressive in bringing public integrity cases and public corruption cases and bringing cases against sitting legislators.

The Congress talks and talks and talks and talks, but doesn't act. I'm going to continue to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to bring about comprehensive immigration reform.

I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution