Quote

The problem... is that most members of Congress don't pay attention to what's going on.

Congressmen spend between five and seven hours a day on the phone, begging for money.

Few Americans have ever met their Congresspeople. They don't see them at the grocery store; they don't meet them at the bowling alley. They're more likely to see their representatives in photographs from the Daily Grill in Washington, D.C., than at a local town hall.

I hate to lose the constituency that I've worked with, but I've got 170,000 people to meet in my new district.

You think your congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or she is probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. But they can't.

In some communities, I show up, and they say, 'Well, we haven't seen our Democrat congressman in 10 years.'

Members of Congress have more in common with the people they hobnob in Washington, D.C., than they do with the people they're supposed to represent.

There aren't a whole lot of people out of 300 million who could elected to the Congress.

You can't go to Washington as a congressman and a senator and expect to make a difference all at once. You have to earn your way.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?