Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we study about checks and balances in government in political science classes. Often, people think in terms of the Court, the Supreme Court, primarily, being a check on the Congress of the United States not doing constitutional things or things in a constitutional way or maybe checking a President not doing things that he is constitutionally empowered to do. We don't often think of Congress being a check on the judicial branch of government, but from time to time we pass legislation that says: To you folks on the Supreme Court making a decision, you didn't make that decision according to what congressional intent was. So we find ourselves passing legislation to overturn some Court case that misinterpreted a statute. At least that is our view that they misinterpreted a statute or congressional intent. The last time I remember doing this was maybe a couple, 3 years ago on a tax bill. It happened that I had at least one person interpreting our statute correctly on this tax provision. It was Justice Breyer. I got a little note from Justice Breyer, pointing to his dissent in that case, and it said: It is an opportunity for you to pass a statute correcting what, I think, was a misinterpretation by the majority of that tax provision. And we got that passed. So here I am again. I don't know how many times in the last 30 years I have had to correct Court decisions misinterpreting the False Claims Act.…”