Executive Branch Quotes

For those who believe executive branch officials will voluntarily interpret their surveillance authorities with restraint, I believe it is more likely that I will achieve my life-long dream of playing in the NBA.

The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity.

While I believe that my lengthy career provides sufficient evidence for consideration of my nomination, I am convinced the efforts to obtain Executive Branch materials and information will continue.

The time has passed in America when this party can be the party of compassion and let the executive branch run foreign policy. It won't work. We have to be the party that can stand toe to toe with George W. Bush on national security, as well as the party of compassion.

You can't have the legislative and executive branch working in a parallel universe...the partisanship that has gripped Washington has prevented us from dealing with the issues that this country needs to grapple with to determine its future.

Nothing in the Constitution of the United States gives the Congress or the Executive Branch the power to attempt the task of regulating climate, as impossible as that would be under any realistic scenarios. No national security emergency exists relative to climate that would warrant increased governmental control of energy production. Today's Americans have an obligation to future Americans to elect leaders who do not believe in an omnipotent government but believe, as did the Founders, in limited government, and in the preservation of liberty and the natural rights of the people.

Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly has been disturbed over what he sees as the erosion of presidential powers since the Watergate scandal and has urged Bush to take a stronger stand against what Cheney sees as congressional intrusions into the executive branch.

Apparently a great many people have forgotten that the framers of our Constitution went to such great effort to create an independent judicial branch that would not be subject to retaliation by either the executive branch or the legislative branch because of some decision made by those judges.

Leaking classified information is a crime. And if we have evidence that somebody in the executive branch is committing a crime, we should prosecute that person.

I think there's always a role for Congress under every instance in every administration to conduct oversight of the executive branch.

The president and the executive branch are always going to have greater latitude and greater authority when it comes to protecting America because sometimes you just have to respond quickly and not everything that is a danger can be publicized and be subject to open debate, but there have to be some guardrails.

I think there's even a chance that [R&D and innovation budgets] might be increased [during Donald Trump Administration] and we should go and make that case to the executive branch, to the Congress.

Our executive branch does not believe in interfering with what the legislative branch chooses to do. We believe in federalism.

I do think it's true that a huge amount of the oversight that the White House engages in with respect to the Executive Branch is out of fear that somebody's going to do something crazy and drive the president off a cliff.

Quite often there's a great deal of disagreement within the executive branch about what we should do. Some cases are pretty straightforward, but a lot of them aren't.

There are a lot of things that are said by people in the military, or civilian life, or in the Congress, or in the Executive Branch, that are their views. And that's the way we live. We're a free people. And that's the wonderful thing about our country.

I have a duty to protect the Executive Branch from legislative encroachment.

The do-not-call registry is still being challenged in court. Yet, the conclusions of the American people, the legislative branch, and the executive branch are beyond question.

The executive branch maneuvered this result deftly.

To those in the executive branch who say ‘just trust us’ when it comes to secret and warrantless surveillance of domestic communications, I say, ‘Remember your history.’

When the American people look at the political process play out, they hear all the spinning and all the doctrinaire language, and they still walk away with the belief that they're not being represented in Congress, that there's no trust in the executive branch.

Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, presidents have understood that the Supreme Court cannot make a law. They cannot make it. The legislature has to make it, the executive branch has to sign it and enforce it.

It is good to be back in the Peoples House. But this cannot be a real homecoming. Under the Constitution, I now belong to the executive branch. The Supreme Court has even ruled that I am the executive branchhead, heart, and hand.

In the executive branch, winning by a whisker is as good as winning in a landslide, but not so in the Senate.

The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law.

I believe Watergate shows that the system did work. Particularly the Judiciary and the Congress, and ultimately an independent prosecutor working in the Executive Branch.

Ive been in the legislative branch and now the executive branch and in each case I felt it was important we use our constitutional responsibilities to the fullest.

[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

The advance planning and sense stimuli employed to capture a $10 million cigarette or soap market are nothing compared to the brainwashing and propaganda blitzes used to ensure control of the largest cash market in the world: the Executive Branch of the United States Government.

Donald Trump is speaking on behalf of the White House, of the executive branch of the United States. Credibility matters.

It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is "The Judge."

You don't just give the executive branch unlimited resources, unlimited power. Our founders were very concerned about too much power being invested in any one, in any branch. The balance of power is fundamental to our system.

I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the difference, and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute them.

If in order to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia and particularly in Indo-China, if in order to avoid it we must take the risk by putting American boys in, I believe that the executive branch of the government has to take the politically unpopular position of facing up to it and doing it, and I personally would support such a decision.

The executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid.

I speak as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Executive Branch of the United States government. The impression that people of faith are uniformly opposed to stem-cell research is not documented by surveys. In fact, many people of strong religious conviction think this can be a morally supportable approach.

People in Congress are willing to shut down the entire government or to make it impossible for a Supreme Court nominee to get a hearing or for routine appointments in the executive branch to go unfilled for years because of a hold placed by a senator.

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.

I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm President of the United States of America.

In an era where the White House is abusing power, is excusing and authorizing torture and is spying on American citizens, I find Judge [Samuel] Alito's support for an all-powerful executive branch to be genuinely troubling.

[I watch] all that stuff - Game of Thrones and all the other series. How about House of Cards? As for Boardwalk Empire - that's another period of government overreach, but at least they use the amendment process! In real life, the executive branch, by violating the Constitution, is using statutes in place of constitutional amendments to diminish our liberty.

As a dad, you are the Vice President of the executive branch of parenting. It doesn't matter what your personality is like, you will always be Al Gore to your wife's Bill Clinton. She feels the pain and you are the annoying nerd telling them to turn off the lights.

We didn't pass any constitutional amendments that affected the executive branch while I was governor.

One of the great things about the United States is that when it comes to world affairs, the president obviously is the leader of the Executive Branch, the Commander-in-Chief, the spokesperson for the nation, but the influence and the work that we have is the result not just of the president, it is the result of countless interactions and arrangements and relationships between our military and other militaries, and our diplomats and other diplomats, the intelligence officers and development workers.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I watched helplessly as the Bush administration led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions. It became painfully obvious that the executive branch of our government did not trust its military. It relied instead on a neoconservative ideology developed by men and women with little, if any, military experience. Some senior military leaders did not challenge civilian decision makers at the appropriate times, and the courageous few who did take a stand were subsequently forced out of the service.

Everything is about accountability to the American people, accountability of the executive branch ... [and] accountability of the oversight of the Congress.

It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that just on the president's say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan, but at O'Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without access to a lawyer or court just because the government says he's connected somehow with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. That's not the American way. It's not the constitutional way.

We all learn in school that the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government must check and balance each other. But other non state institutions must participate in this important system of checks and balances as well. These checking institutions include the academy, the media, religious institutions and NGOs.

Under our system of three branches of government, the courts ultimately are the checks on the legislative and executive branches when they exceed or even abuse the limits of their power.