Members Of The United States Senate

"With words woven into almost every detail of his life, it seems amazing that Mr. Mets' thinking on the subject of language should be so limited."

"I looked down on a quilt of clouds, bordered on the horizon by the blood-orange streaks of the setting sun. As the steady hum of the engine drowned out the chatter around me, I realized that I would probably be thinking about the implications of Watergate for the rest of my life. For the country, and for me it had been a significant point in time. (page 263)"

"Whether he realizes it or not, however, Mr. Mets is affected every hour of his life not only by the words he hears and uses, but also by his unconscious assumptions about language. [...] Such unconscious assumptions determine the effect that words have on him -- which in turn determines the way he acts, whether wisely or foolishly. Words -- the way he uses them and the way he takes them when spoken by others -- largely shape his beliefs, his prejudices, his ideals, his aspirations. They constitute the moral and intellectual atmosphere in which he lives -- in short, his semantic environment."

"Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise,—all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of"

"The poor must be wisely visited and liberally cared for, so that mendicity shall not be tempted into mendacity, nor want exasperated into crime."

"All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State."

"A star for every State, and a State for every star."

"There are no points of the compass on the chart of true patriotism."

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

"We were violating the law, lobbying from the executive branch."

"I have not been convicted of anything."

"I confess, Sir, I am at a loss to conceive how any man, who has ever read our Constitution as originally framed, or as it now exists, can listen a moment to such an argument. If anything be clearer than another on its face, it is, that it was intended to constitute a Christian State. I deny totally the gentleman's position, that the religious expressions it contains were intended only to show forth the pious sentiments of those who framed it. They were intended to incorporate into our system the principles of Christianity, — principles which belonged not only to those who framed, but to the whole people who adopted it. Sir, the people of that day were a Christian people; they adopted a Christian Constitution; they no more contemplated the existence of infidelity than the Athenian laws provided against the perpetration of parricide. They established a Christian Commonwealth; they wrote upon its walls, Salvation, and upon its gates, Praise; and Christianity is as clearly now its corner-stone, as if the initial letter of every page of our Statute Book, like that of some monkish manuscript, were illuminated with the figure of the Cross!"

"Our Country,—whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurements more or less,—still our Country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands."

"In the City of San Francisco, we have drunk to the very dregs of infamy; we have had vile officials; we have had rotten newspapers. But we have nothing so vile, nothing so low, nothing so debased, nothing so infamous in San Francisco as Harrison Gray Otis. He sits there in senile dementia with gangrene heart and rotting brain, grimacing at every reform, chattering impotently at all things that are decent, frothing, fuming, violently gibbering, going down to his grave in snarling infamy. He is one thing that all California looks at when, in looking at Southern California, they see anything that is disgraceful, depraved, corrupt, crooked and putrescent—that is Harrison Gray Otis."

"The first casualty when war comes is truth."

"You send me to Washington to represent you in the senate. But you do not send me there because you are interested in grave questions of national or international policy. When I come back to Arizona, you never ask me any questions about such policies; instead you ask me: “What about my pension?” or “What about that job for my son?” I am not in Washington as a statesman. I am there as a very well paid messenger boy doing your errands. My chief occupation is going around with a forked stick picking up little fragments of patronage for my constituents."

"I could throw 56-pound words clear across the Grand Canyon. As a matter of course, I went into politics."

"Whoever in his public services is handcuffed and shackled by the vice of consistency will be a man not free to act as various questions come before him from time to time; he will be a statesman locked in a prison house, keys to which are in the keeping of days and events that are dead. Let me quote Emerson: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen.'"

"There has never been superadded to these vices of mine the withering, embalming vice of consistency."

"Poker teaches self-reliance, self-control, self-respect, self-denial, and independence. But when cards are wild or are given fictitious authority, the noble game is robbed of its romance, grace and stimulation and degenerates into a gambling scheme."

"No man is fit to be a Senator... unless he is willing to surrender his political life for great principle."

"… I shall not waste any time on such miserable twaddle as to say that I ought to have been elected. … It is the undoubted right of the people to change their servants, and to remove one and displace him with another at any time they choose, for a good reason, for a bad reason, or for no reason at all. If we are to remain a free people, it is the duty of public servants not grumpily and sourly to accept the verdict of the majority, but joyously to accept that verdict. . . ."

"A speech is entertaining only when serenely detached from all information."

"It is still an open question as to whether mankind or insects shall ultimately inherit the earth. It is my opinion that mankind … has about a 50-50 chance...."

"I suffer from cacoethes loquendi, a mania or itch for talking, and from vanity . . . and morbidity, and, as is obvious to everyone who knows me, an inborn, an inveterate flair for histrionics. … I am pachydermatous. … I am a veritable peripatetic bifurcated volcano on behalf of Democratic principles."

"The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political “leaders” like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm. McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse. The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle—they’ve never had it so good—and they want to keep it that way! We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last."

"Republicans like Kentucky's Mitch McConnell were quick to defend Rice with trivia. (MCCONNELL): Her parents aptly named her Condoleezza, after the Italian musical term "con dolcezza," which is a direction to play "with sweetness". (STEWART): Her last name is a starchy side dish, often served with beans. I vote 'yes'!"

"It was a complete election disaster in Georgia, and certain other swing states. McConnell did nothing, and will never do what needs to be done in order to secure a fair and just electoral system into the future. He doesn’t have what it takes, never did, and never will."

"While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to reconsider immigration reform in the 2015 session, he did find time to debate a proposal by Pennsylvania's Republican senator Pat Toomey to deny federal economic development assistance to "sanctuary cities," where police and other public agencies do not inquire into a person's immigration status during routine business."

"In 2018, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, perhaps Trump's most important political ally, declared that "the American people know that the fact-free politics of hate, fear, and intimidation are not how we actually govern in our democratic republic." "Hate, fear, and intimidation" are a concise summary of the politics of a candidate who not only ran on promises of mass deportations, Muslim bans, and birtherism but those of a president who used his authority to coerce others to intervene in elections on his behalf."

"In 1993, during the debate over NAFTA,...Kentucky's Senator Mitch McConnell, later to become the Republican Senate majority leader, promised: "American firms will not move to Mexico just for lower wages"...Unfortunately, President Clinton, Senator McConnell, the Heritage Foundation, and many, many others were way off the mark. Instead of creating a million American jobs, the Economic Policy Institute found, NAFTA destroyed more than 850,000 American jobs."

"Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country."

"Ultimately, Sen. McConnell will need to decide how much he wants to press his colleagues to ‘pack’ the Fed for this nomination to advance,"

"In the Senate yesterday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of breaking their promise to confirm a number of presidential judicial nominations. To punish the Dems, McConnell used Senate rules to waste virtually the whole day having the Senate clerk read the bill under consideration, a global warming bill, aloud -- all 491 pages of it. Why? A Republican lobbyist leaked an internal GOP strategy memo to the Democrats (quote): "The GOP very much wants to have this fight, engage in it for a prolonged period, and then make it as difficult as possible to move off the bill." Why? (quote) "The focus is much more on making political points than in amending the bill, changing the baseline text for any future debate, or effecting policy." Making not policy but political points the goal of Mr. Bush's party: and you thought they weren't good at anything."

"The long view of history is going to conclude that the political genius of Mitch McConnell was strictly limited to his ability to muster a majority to employ every chokepoint in an 18th-century Constitution to make sure that a Black man who was elected to be president was not able to act fully as president."

"Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican Party policy since May 2008. When gas prices soared to unprecedented heights, the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less," with an emphasis on the now. The wildly popular campaign was a cry against caution, against study, against measured action. In Gingrich's telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might be-locked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshore-was a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once. In the face of this triple win, caring about the environment was for sissies: as Senator Mitch McConnell put it, "in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas, they think oil rigs are pretty.""

"Mr. President. I rise today to honor my good friend Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader whose strong leadership, sterling example and wise counsel have earned him an honored position within the ranks of the extraordinary public servants who now serve or have served in the U.S. Senate. Senator McConnell is the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the U.S. Senate, the first being Senator Alben Barkley, who led Senate Democrats from 1937 to 1949. Mitch is now the longest-serving Republican Senator in Kentucky history, eclipsing the previous record held by the legendary Senator John Sherman Cooper. Today, Senator McConnell has been serving as a U.S. Senator for almost a quarter century. During that time, four U.S. Presidents, scores of colleagues, and several crises have come and gone, but Mitch has carried on with courage, boldness and steadfastness. He has weathered the most turbulent political seas and has always been a calming influence on his Senate colleagues while at the helm."

"Few would have predicted that Senator McConnell would have such staying power when he was first elected to the Senate in 1984 by a razor-thin margin--less than half a percentage point. But political pundits and prognosticators often only skim the surface or state the obvious and give short shrift to the characteristics that matter most in the making of an outstanding leader. In other words, they didn't really know Mitch McConnell. They didn't know about how he overcame polio at age 2, undergoing an intensive therapy regimen at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation and obeying doctors' orders not to walk or run for 2 years. That took determination, and Mitch showed that early on. Senator McConnell's service to his State and Nation is as varied as it is impressive. After serving as a student body president and graduating with honors at the University of Louisville College of Arts and Sciences in 1964, he went on to law school at the University of Kentucky, where he was elected president of the Student Bar Association and earned a law degree. He followed that by working as an intern for Senator John Sherman Cooper and as a chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook, which provided him with invaluable experience in Washington, DC. Other stints followed: He was deputy attorney general under President Gerald R. Ford and a county judge-executive in Kentucky until he was sworn in as a U.S. Senator on Jan. 3, 1985."

"Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply: America should not be held liable for something that happened 150 years ago, since none of us currently alive are responsible... As historian Ed Baptist has written, enslavement, quote, “shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics” of America, so that by 1836 more than $600 million, or almost half of the economic activity in the United States, derived directly or indirectly from the cotton produced by the million-odd slaves. By the time the enslaved were emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America—$3 billion in 1860 dollars, more than all the other assets in the country combined. The method of cultivating this asset was neither gentle cajoling nor persuasion, but torture, rape and child trafficking. Enslavement reigned for 250 years on these shores. When it ended, this country could have extended its hallowed principles—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—to all, regardless of color. But America had other principles in mind. And so, for a century after the Civil War, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror, a campaign that extended well into the lifetime of Majority Leader McConnell. It is tempting to divorce this modern campaign of terror, of plunder, from enslavement. But the logic of enslavement, of white supremacy, respects no such borders, and the god of bondage was lustful and begat many heirs—coup d’états and convict leasing. vagrancy laws and debt peonage, redlining and racist GI bills, poll taxes and state-sponsored terrorism."

"We grant that Mr. McConnell was not alive for Appomattox. But he was alive for the electrocution of George Stinney. He was alive for the blinding of Isaac Woodard. He was alive to witness kleptocracy in his native Alabama and a regime premised on electoral theft. Majority Leader McConnell cited civil rights legislation yesterday, as well he should, because he was alive to witness the harassment, jailing and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by a government sworn to protect them. He was alive for the redlining of Chicago and the looting of black homeowners of some $4 billion. Victims of that plunder are very much alive today. I am sure they’d love a word with the majority leader. What they know, what this committee must know, is that while emancipation dead-bolted the door against the bandits of America, Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open. And that is the thing about Senator McConnell’s “something.” It was 150 years ago. And it was right now. The typical black family in this country has one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family. Black women die in childbirth at four times the rate of white women. And there is, of course, the shame of this land of the free boasting the largest prison population on the planet, of which the descendants of the enslaved make up the largest share."

"In whatever position Senator McConnell has served, he has unfailingly served with distinction. I have had the good fortune of working with Mitch for years, dating back to his election as a freshman Senator, when he became the first Republican to win a statewide race in Kentucky since 1968. In fact, Mitch was the only Republican in the Nation in 1984 to defeat a Democrat incumbent. To his considerable credit, Mitch has been defying the odds ever since. For example, during his tenure as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Republicans controlled the Senate--in large part due to his leadership. Mitch McConnell is a conservative's conservative who gets high marks from the American Conservative Union and all who know him. Moreover, he is a scholar and able defender of the Constitution and this great country. Knowing just how deadly terrorists can be, he is deadly serious about protecting America. He also is an outspoken advocate of the first amendment and a tremendous parliamentary tactician. When Mitch McConnell talks, people listen and pay heed--almost always with excellent results."

"Why was McConnell so mad? Well, at least part of that ire was playacting. McConnell wants to be as outraged as possible about the possibility of fiddling with the filibuster to send a signal to on-the-fence Democrats about what he believes the consequences would be of changing the rules. McConnell also could well be sending up a flare for former President Donald Trump, who has relentlessly attacked the Republican leader in recent months. See, I can attack Biden too! — and all that. But I don't think politics alone explains just how vociferous McConnell was in his critique of Biden. It felt more personal — and my educated guess is that the Kentucky Republican thought of himself and Biden as two similar souls when it comes to the Senate. Sure, they disagreed on most issues when they served together, but they both found common cause on the sanctity of the filibuster."

"McConnell, in short, felt (and feels) betrayed by Biden. We can debate for days as to whether he should — particularly given the blockade McConnell and his Republican colleagues have constructed to stop much of the Biden agenda in the Senate. Whether or not McConnell's anger is justified, however, is somewhat beside the point. It's uniquely possible that the final two years of Biden's first term will be under a Republican-controlled Senate, with McConnell as its leader. That can't be an appetizing prospect for Biden — particularly after McConnell's tirade against him Wednesday."

"Mitch McConnell and the other elites really have not figured out what is happening in this moment of great crisis and upheaval. What we are seeing now in America is about so much more than people just being sick of the police murdering innocent people. It is a generational and class revolt."

"Congress, particularly the Republican Senate, has been dragging its feet over passing a bill to provide states-specific aid, because doing so would be an example of government working to help the people, and such a thing is ideologically unsound on McConnell's side of the aisle."

"If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell."

"To me, in political terms, McConnell is actually far worse than the . The Grim Reaper only comes once in our lifetimes -- at the moment of death. In contrast, McConnell has been killing legislation for years. Add to that, McConnell has now gone beyond killing bills to helping embolden Donald Trump's worst instincts. [...] There's no way to stop the actual "Grim Reaper." But, with McConnell, there's one way to retire him. He is up for re-election in November 2020. And before you dismiss the notion that McConnell could lose, keep in mind that a recent poll from McConnell's home state of Kentucky shows him with about a 33% favorable rating, while over 50% hold an unfavorable view. The people of Kentucky may just have had their fill of McConnell, who appears to take joy in killing legislation that will help our nation. Kentucky voters could retaliate and act as the "Grim Reaper" -- bringing McConnell's political career to an end."

"Short, owlish, with a smooth Kentucky accent, McConnell seemed an unlikely Republican leader. He showed no aptitude for schmoozing, backslapping, or rousing oratory. As far as anyone could tell, he had no close friends even in his own caucus, nor did he appear to have any strong convictions beyond an almost religious opposition to any version of campaign finance reform. Joe told me of one run-in he'd had on the Senate floor after the Republican leader blocked a bill Joe was sponsoring; when Joe tried to explain the bill's merits, McConnell raised his hand like a traffic cop and said, "You must be under the mistaken impression that I care." But what McConnell lacked in charisma or interest in policy he more than made up for in discipline, shrewdness, and shamelessness- all of which he employed in the single-minded and dispassionate pursuit of power."

"Finland and Sweden are impressive and capable countries, with military capabilities that surpass many of our existing NATO allies. As new members, they would more than pull their weight. These two nations' geographic locations are strategic. They have well-equipped and professional armed forces. Their military and high-tech industrial bases are robust. There is already significant interoperability that connects their defenses and NATO's. I will have more to say on this subject in the days and weeks ahead. Finland and Sweden would make NATO even stronger than it stands today. Finally, it must be noted that our delegation was not the most important group of Americans shipping out to stand with our friends in Europe--not by a longshot. There are 100,000 American soldiers currently stationed in Europe to bolster the peace and shore up NATO. This includes the Kentucky-based V Corps. And we received word just last week that 4,700 members of the 101st Airborne from Kentucky's Fort Campbell will also travel to Europe in the coming months. The Screaming Eagles have a long history of defending America's national security interests in Europe. I am proud of these brave men and women for being ready to deploy at a moment's notice. I am proud America can make this peaceful contribution to our allies' sovereignty and strength in Europe, and I am proud of the entire Fort Campbell community for keeping these men and women well-prepared for this mission."

"Shortly thereafter, Trump incited a violent attack on the Capitol in an attempt to hold onto power; while holed up with staff in his office, Tackett reports, McConnell started crying while telling the group, “You are my family, and I hate the fact that you had to go through this.” The following month, the lawmaker declared on the Senate floor that Trump was “practically and morally responsible”"