Political Quotes

“my distinguished colleague with his piercing legal mind and his reverence for the Constitution has identified one of the core problems, which is that this amendment would not just rewrite budgetary matters in this country; it rewrites the whole formulation of the balance of power. Now, what the extent of power of the Executive would be under this amendment, the full limits of that we cannot know. We would have to wait for years for the Court to decide about whether the President has the impoundment power, the impoundment duty; how can he exercise that; must he do so across the board or can he go in and eliminate individual projects; can he, for example, take all the money out of Social Security or must he treat all the retirement programs alike? This would be enormous power and discretion in the Executive. The people out there say, well, we vote for the President and we can talk to the President. I wonder how my constituents who call me up and call their Congressman up--and they are able to get us and able to write us--would feel about writing the President to come out and fix a levee on the Red River. I wonder how they would feel about calling the President to get a Federal building or whatever in their district. The point of the matter is that the President with his power of the bully pulpit, with his enormous knowledge, particularly this President, about everything that goes on cannot know all that detail and the people could not get to him.…”