Congress

"Congress is continually appointing fact-finding committees, when what we really need are some fact-facing committees."
        --Roger Allen

"What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?"
        --Marion Barry, Mayor of Wash. D.C.

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
        --Edmund Burke, to the voters of Bristol, 1774

"Is it any wonder, why the approval ratings of the Congress go up every time we go into recess?"
        --Sen. Robert C. Byrd, (Democrat West Virginia)

"Americans just want us to... not be concerned if they can be constitutionally justified... Why, if we had to do that we could not pass most of the laws we enact around here."
        --Sen. John Glenn, (Democrat, Ohio) 07/16/96

"I have been up to see Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving."
        --Robert E. Lee

"The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands."
        --John Locke

"I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election ... It adds up to a preconcieved plan to de-stroy the economic and social independence of the United States!"
        --Sen. George W. Malone,1957

"Now and then an innocent man is sent t' th' legislature."
        --Frank McKinney

"Welcome to the U.S. Capitol: Watch for falling expectations."
        --Wiley Miller, in the comic strip "Non Sequitur"

"Hurray! Congress is to adjourn! Only four more days of Congressional burglary on the Treasury!"
        -- Will Rogers

"Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?"
        --Will Rogers

"If we took Congress seriously, we would be worrying all the time."
        --Will Rogers

"You see, in Washington they have these bodies, Senate and the House of Representatives. That is for the convenience of the visitors. If there is nothing funny happening in one, there is sure to be in the other, and in case one body passes a good bill, why, the other can see it in time and kill it."
        --Will Rogers

"That's what a Congressman or a Senator is for -- to see that too much money don't accumulate in the national Treasury."
        --Will Rogers

"A foreigner coming here and reading the Congressional Record would say that the President of the United States was elected solely for the purpose of giving Senators somebody to call a horse thief."
        --Will Rogers

"All one has to do to get one's stuff in the Congressional Record is to find a stenographer that can stay awake long enough to take it down. Then you mark in the 'Applause' and 'Laughter' parts yourself."
        --Will Rogers

"This stuff they are talking here in Congress costs the people of the United States $44 a page. That's beside what it costs to ship it to the asylums where it's read."
        --Will Rogers

"It sure did kick up some excitement in the Senate when one Senator called the other Senators 'sons of Wild jackasses.' Well, if you thought it made the Senators hot, you wait till you see what happens when the jackasses hear how they have been slandered."
        --Will Rogers

"Tomorrow is Labor Day, I suppose set by Act of Congress. Everything we do nowadays is either by, or against, Acts of Congress.
    How Congress knew anything about Labor is beyond us."
        --Will Rogers

"Farmers, get out your sense of humor! Congress meets to relieve you again next week."
        --Will Rogers

"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'present' or 'not guilty.'"
        --Theodore Roosevelt

"To call Congress emasculated is to insult eunuchs."
        --David C. Stolinsky

"The Senate being tied is a start. Now, if only it could be gagged."
        --Bob Thaves, in the comic strip "Frank & Ernest"

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
        --Mark Twain

"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."
        --Mark Twain

"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity."
        --Mark Twain

"Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man."
        --Mark Twain

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session."
        --Mark Twain