Legislative Stalemate Quotes

We can't have the government of the United States shut down when a group doesn't like something. This is almost an act of insurrection.

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.

Everywhere I go - from Main Street to Wall Street - people ask, 'What's happened to our political system? Why can't Washington folks work together?'

If you're not comfortable with delay, frustration and impatience, get out of the Senate. It's the nature of the institution, but I think we've taken it to an art form.

In our political system it’s easier to block action than to act.

Unfortunately, the genuine relationships and friendships that some of us have developed across the aisle in recent years does not translate into a willingness to seek compromise, consensus, or middle ground on the major challenges facing our state. The extreme ideology of the self-styled Tea Party legislators in Arizona absolutely rules the day.

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'

The House Republican leadership has simply run out of ideas.

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

Washington is a place where politics and economics often aren't on speaking terms.

If immigration reform was easy, Congress would have dealt with it 15 years ago.

While 2013 will not see a major national election, we can be sure that most Republicans will obstruct and some Democrats will appease.

Obama has offered no solutions; his Democratic majority in the Senate has failed to produce a budget in 1,200 days; and they have both obstructed the Republicans' proposed remedies.

I think that what is truly unfortunate is when an entire party makes a decision that they're going to block every single thing that a president wants to accomplish. It's very - it's very hard to get anything done in those circumstances.

I've had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress.

We need Congress to do more than just engage in partisan games.

If I live my life thinking that something might not pass the Senate, I would never even get up and bother to go to work.

There are a lot of politicians who are just obstructionists.

Despite support from a majority of Americans, a majority of the House of Representatives, and a majority of the Senate, Keystone XL is stuck - stalled by special-interest politics.

Senators, representatives too often, we hear from our base, don't talk to the other side, don't with work with them.

The Congress has now become a fairly evenly divided entity.

“If we don’t get our way, we will shut the Government down.” You and that attitude is a luxury this country cannot afford.

We've got this proposal which has been languishing in the legislature, the Water Legacy Act, which is derived from a Republican task force on protecting the Great Lakes. Yet nothing has been done on it.

In the United States Senate we have to break the culture of procrastination.

The Left has been frustrated because President Obama has allowed the Republicans to run all over him.