Capitol Hill Quotes

People think that politics just somehow magically organizes itself. It doesn't work that way. You need to assemble these huge coalitions of 535 politicians on Capitol Hill, and tens of thousands of interest groups, and tens of millions of voters, and assemble all those in government to get stuff done.

Once again, the puppets on Capitol Hill are about to slam the Muppets on Main Street. The country still hasn't recovered from the Wall Street-induced financial cataclysm of 2008, yet Congress is preparing to enact the Orwellian 'JOBS Act' - a bill that should in fact be called the 'Return Fraud to Wall Street in One Easy Step Act.'

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill.

I hate to tell you, but it's not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill and there have been other scandals as you know that have been more than simply naughty e-mails.

It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country.

Like every American, I will never forget where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001. As a member of Congress from Indiana, that day my duties took me to Capitol Hill and to sights and sounds I will never forget.

Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory.

[On women in previously all-male fields:] I think it will change in a lot of workplaces. I'm not so sure it will ever change on Capitol Hill until more women are in powerful positions. Because this is the last plantation for men.

It [Lincoln movie] had nothing to do with politics. It had nothing to do with holding a mirror up to the way we conduct our business on Capitol Hill. This was meant to be a story, a Lincoln portrait if you will. I think any time is the right time for a very compelling story, any time.

President-elect Trump has the vision. And what Mike Pence brings to the table as vice president-elect is somebody who knows Capitol Hill. So he can take Donald Trump's vision, help translate that into actual policy, legislative language, bill text, working through the process so that it ends up back on Donald Trump's desk so that he can sign it into law.

I do think that part of the reason why [Donald Trump] asked me to run with him and gave me the opportunity to serve with him was informed by my 12 years of experience on Capitol Hill and my years as governor of the State of Indiana.

The president is now having to deal with a Congress. He's never had to do that before. The president in the past, he has just done whatever he wanted. He had a big rubberstamp here up on Capitol Hill, whatever he wanted, they stamped OK. That's not the way it is now.

I think it's important that members of the United States Senate spend time not just on Capitol Hill but making contact with ordinary people and engaging them in the political process.

Can I give a little advice to the old man on Capitol Hill? Stop saying teabagger. Ask your younger staffers what it means.

Climbing has worked for me in a number of ways on Capitol Hill. I'm much more inclined to look at what people do, as opposed to what they say. Also, it's about working together - we're all on the rope together, and you don't get to cut the rope if you're not getting along with someone.

The power of the silent filibuster to distort Senate politics is now accepted on Capitol Hill and by the press as normal and not worth mentioning. Let me be the skunk at this political garden party and say this stinks. Representative government was not designed to work this way by the Founding Fathers.

Every Democrat on Capitol Hill professes to be a fiscal hawk.

A lot of people on Capitol Hill don't want to talk to me.

Environmentalists hate sprawl - except when it comes to the size of their expansive pet legislation on Capitol Hill.

On Capitol Hill, House Republicans have been doing our part. We've been hard at work developing policies that will help empower all Americans. We're beginning to see results. We reduced taxes for everyone.

The reality is the cap-and-trade legislation offered by the Democrats amounts to an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill.

At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They're all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they're all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That's a formula for getting news.

Artists have really never had any representation on Capitol Hill, because it's not the nature of the artist to join together and make a unified presence. Those days kind of died in the '60s.

I don't know if anybody can second-guess what they will do on Capitol Hill.

You`ve got James Comey on camera on Capitol Hill saying, - no, it is not much less of an offense than Hillary Clinton. In fact, it is far more serious. It was prosecuted.

A senator will come off Capitol Hill and they'll be barred from two years from lobbying in the Senate. So they'll pick the phone up and they'll call their buddy, the senator, their old buddies, and they'll say, 'Listen, I'm here at this law firm now. I can't lobby you, but my new partner, Jack, can lobby you.'

Congress, 535 commoditized temple monkeys pawing through the ruins of America in search of bribes. The bicameral whorehouse on Capitol Hill works like a vending machine. You put coins in the slot, select your law, and the desired legislation slides out.

On my radio show Chris Christie came to the defense of Ted Cruz, noting that - I guess at a rally, that - one of those Iran rallies on Capitol Hill, I believe even Donald Trump, according to Christie, had acknowledged that, you know, Ted Cruz of course was eligible, and just because he was born in Canada.

On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled House voted mostly along party lines tonight to pass President Bush's federal budget blueprint. This includes his big tax cut plan, partly bankrolled, critics say, through cuts in many federal aid programs for children and education.

After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill. From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street.

And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.

I guided my heap into the heart of Capitol Hill wondering for the first time in fourteen years what I could do to get money besides drive cabs or rob banks. Both occupations had their pros and cons. For instance, bank robbery isn't quite as dangerous as cab driving, but it pays better.

I opposed No Child Left Behind, I opposed the Medicare prescription drug bill, I opposed the Wall Street bailout. What the American people are starting to see is that Republican, Republicans on Capitol Hill get it and the Democrats, from the White House to Capitol Hill, just don't get it.

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.

I walked to Seward School first through fourth grade. It's just amazing to me now that we'd walk down 10th Avenue on Capitol Hill.

On Capitol Hill, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales raised his right hand, swore to tell the truth, and then everybody had a good laugh and went back to what they were doing.

The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious, the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of characters mythic in scale. I cannot conceive of a better book about Capitol Hill. An unforgettable, epic achievement in the art of biography.

I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10-mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe.

As a Mark brand ambassador, I became extremely cognizant of the devastating statistics about dating abuse and partner violence via the mPowerment campaign and knew I wanted to help change those statistics. mPowerment by Mark and the Avon Foundation for Women funded the No More study, which explored dating abuse, partner violence, and sexual assault. I was honored to be part of it and report the results of the survey in a Capitol Hill briefing.

Wind has the potential to produce many, many more jobs per kilowatt hour than coal. But the coal industry has tremendous political clout on Capitol Hill because of its alliance with the railroads... and with coal-burning utilities...

The focus of President Trump's administration will continue to be to have a safer America, to have a more prosperous America, and to continue to advance the president's agenda, both on Capitol Hill and through executive action and carry that message all across the country.

The first thing I would do would be to move forward with an agenda to make sure that we give D.C. the opportunity to elect its own representatives and have some political power on Capitol Hill.

I think the relationships that we [with Donald Trump] developed on Capitol Hill are the reason why he's asked me to be a part of the team that's working to move our agenda forward in the House and in the Senate.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the 2015 State of the Union address was not the president at the podium but the audience in the seats. The joint session of Congress listening to President Obama Tuesday night included 83 fewer Democrats than the group that heard Obama's first address in 2009 - 69 fewer Democrats in the House and 14 fewer in the Senate. The scene in the House Chamber was a graphic reminder of the terrible toll the Obama years have taken on Capitol Hill Democrats.

We started tearing down the seniority system on Capitol Hill. All of that begins in the '70s. It accelerates and continues in the '90s, and it's going on to this day.

We see it in attempts on Capitol Hill to impose gag rules on rules on doctors on what they can say to their patients about family planning. And we certainly see it now with an effort by the government to tap our phones; invade our medical records, credit information, library records and the most sensitive personal information in the name of national security.