The primary reason that I'd be here or that Don Payne Jr. would be here is for you to know that members of Congress actually exist and are human.
The Congress is virtually incapable of passing any reforms unless they first get permission from the powerful special interests who are most affected by the proposal.
I came to Congress on the promise of cutting wasteful government spending. There are plenty of examples of the government playing loose with taxpayer money, but none more so than how we spend our foreign aid dollars.
No Congress ever has seen fit to amend the Constitution to address any issue related to marriage. No Constitutional Amendment was needed to ban polygamy or bigamy, nor was a Constitutional Amendment needed to set a uniform age of majority to ban child marriages.
Now I get a very nice salary as a member of Congress, but when I'm in Washington, I sleep in my office.
When we look at the situation in Ferguson, Missouri and the tragic death of Michael Brown, we are reminded of the importance of who we elect to our city councils, who sits on our local board of education committees, who we pick to represent us in Congress, in the Senate and more.
In addition to demanding answers and accountability from the Veterans Administration, Congress had to act to ensure veterans do not suffer because of the actions of a federal agency.
Reaping political dividends out of tragedies is deeply engrained in the Congress' DNA.
I wasn't predicted to be anything. I just followed an inner spirit, and it put me in the right place and the right time. I didn't want to be the mayor of Atlanta. I didn't want to run for Congress. I didn't want to work for Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to work close to him and be a writer and write about the movement.
As the president of a cutting-edge research and development firm, I deal with the development of solutions to long-term national security and renewable energy problems every day and will bring this same perspective to Congress.
It has been a top priority of Congress to reduce the drug costs of all seniors.
I strongly support SNAP and will continue to urge my colleagues in Congress to provide adequate funding to this important program.
The first session of the Congress of the United States under the Constitution was devoted principally to the problems of immediate revenues and administrative and judicial organization.
Before Congress cuts funding for Head Start, Social Security, and financial aid for college, we have got to make sure that large, profitable corporations are paying their fair share of taxes.
Whenever we have had a need for a national security or public safety issue, Congress has always followed the recommendations of the White House, regardless of who is in control, giving them the resources to keep America safe and to enforce our laws.
As I stated shortly after retiring from the U.S. Army and first pursuing a seat in Congress in 2010, I planned to self-impose term limits.
The NSA has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times a year since Congress gave it broad new powers in 2008.
We are scheduled to meet this year fewer days than any Congress since at least 1948. And that is even before I was born. So far, we are in the 123rd day of this year, and yet we have only had 26 voting days in this body. That is a shame.
In early January I introduced my legislation, which, besides prohibiting Federal funding of human cloning, also expresses the sense of Congress that foreign nations should establish total prohibition on human cloning as well.
You can't snap your fingers, and suddenly half of Congress is women.
Whenever the Congress represents the increasing diversity of the United States, that's a good thing.
I think it's time... that we reform Congress to the point where all public assistance comes in one single committee. One area where all public assistance can be located, and it will be easy to see all the duplications, all the waste, so much easier to see areas where fraud is running rampant.
When we go to Congress, there are strict rules about what I can be involved with and what I can't be involved with when it comes to business relationships and business operations.
There's no conscious plan here; my whole life in politics as a state legislator and in Congress has been about strengthening the middle class.
The argument has been made in Congress that it is slippery slope if you allow therapeutic, what people people are calling therapeutic cloning, then you will get reproductive cloning.
Believe it or not, there are members of Congress who actually want to govern and get stuff done. Unfortunately, there are others whose agendas and strategies serve to advance their own interests and expand their donor base.
If a gigantic asteroid were barreling toward impact with our planet, you can bet there would be at least a few members of Congress who would insist on leaving it alone, either because they would see it as a warning shot from the Almighty or because a mining company with a savvy team of lobbyists had laid claim to the big rock.
Congress as a whole is less popular than it's been since polling was invented.
I belong to the Congress. My party has always supported prohibition, though it may not have been successful in implementing prohibition in many states.
When Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force immediately after the 9/11 attacks, no one could have imagined this authorization would continue to be the basis for American wars that persist a decade and a half later.
The Constitution's pretty clear. The Federalist papers are pretty clear... They very specifically delegated the power to declare war to Congress. They wanted this to be a congressional decision; they did not want war to be engaged in by the executive without approval of Congress.
The critical role of Congress in the adoption of international agreements was clearly laid out by our Founding Fathers in our Constitution. And it's a principle upon which Democrats and Republicans have largely agreed.
I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.
Mr. Trump has said that he wants a vice president who knows Washington, is able to deal with the Congress, and could be viewed as somebody who could be president.
Women oftentimes are the ones making those economic decisions, sitting around the kitchen table and trying to figure out how to pay for rising gas prices or food prices or the health insurance costs. And I think that they see where they expect their leaders in Congress to also make those tough decisions.
Maybe I'm like acts of Congress or your favorite Chinese restaurant - you don't really want to know what's going on behind the door. I'm a real study in contrast, I expect, looking from without. But it adds up to what you get on stage.
