A Quote by Cass Sunstein

In recent years, Republicans have argued that Congress is a more responsible policymaker than the executive branch. But when it comes to regulation, Congress is often much worse, and for just one reason: Executive agencies almost always focus on both costs and benefits, and Congress usually doesn't.

Cass Sunstein

Quote Topics

Agencies Almost Always Argued Benefits Both Branch Congress Costs Executive Executive Branch Focus Just Just One More Much Often Reason Recent Regulation Republicans Responsible Than Worse Years

Quote Author

Cass Sunstein
American - Lawyer
Born: September 21, 1954

As a member of Congress, I believe Congress must provide oversight of actions by the Executive Branch as our system of checks and balances requires.

Charles B. Rangel

I was very, very concerned about President Obama and how much executive order and how much executive power he tried to exert. But I think I want to be, and I think congress will be, a check on any executive, Republican or Democrat, that tries to grasp too much power. And really, a lot of the fault is not only presidents trying to take too much power, it's Congress giving up too much power.

Rand Paul

Agencies and the executive branch need to enforce the law. They don't need to fill in the spaces if Congress doesn't act.

Scott Pruitt

I've got a pen, and I've got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive action. I've got a pen to talk executive actions where congress won't. Where congress isn't acting, I'll act on my own. I have got a pen and I got a phone. And that is all I need.

Barack Obama

The thing about an executive order - there has never been an executive order that a Congress couldn't say, "You know, we don't like that so we're going to do something else," if there is a majority in Congress to do something else.

Tim Kaine

Congress is a co-equal branch of government, with a long and rich history of standing up to the executive branch.

Charlie Sykes

By Congress delegating its authority to the executive and judicial branches, we've removed the American people from the process. They're left as bystanders to the whims of executive overreach, and they're watching the country they know and love slip away. Worse, they think their representatives are powerless to stop it.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

People assume that the executive branch has more power than it actually has. Only the legislative branch can create the laws; the executive branch cannot create the laws. So, if the executive branch tries to create a branch one side or the other... you go back to the founders of the nation. They set up a system that ensures that it doesn't happen.

Michael Dell

There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.

Michael Hayden

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

Paul Ryan

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

Charles Krauthammer

When it imposes expensive regulatory mandates on the private sector, Congress often acts on the basis of interest-group pressures, anecdotes, and the emotions of the moment. The executive branch is hardly perfect, but it is far less likely to do that.

Cass Sunstein

The 112th Congress passed only 220 laws, the lowest number enacted by any Congress. In 1948, when President Truman called the 80th Congress a 'Do-Nothing' Congress, it had passed more than 900 laws.

Juan Williams

I think if you look at yesterday's New York Times poll, particularly when you judge Democrats in Congress versus the Republicans in Congress, people put a little more faith, or even a little more than a little more faith in the Democrats in Congress.

John Podesta

Until a legislative solution to the nation's outdated immigration system becomes a priority for Congress, the right administration will need to examine a broad range of executive actions to enact immediately in the face of a 'Do Nothing Congress.'