Norman Ornstein Members Quotations

There is extreme nervousness about November. The last thing that members want is to be out there in a tough campaign, where the wind is at your face, defending the indefensible.

I'm sure that he's growing a little tired of members taking what he believes are gratuitous personal shots at him,

When you have a dramatic expansion of the ability of individual members to direct federal funds or to designate contracts, you are creating the most fertile environment for corruption imaginable.

Congress as a whole needs to step back and look at the way it conducts its business. It's not just lobbyists influencing members of Congress, it's members of Congress shaking down lobbyists for money.

It's a self-perpetuating system involving interests, members of Congress, people in the executive branch and patronage positions and so on.

Some members are pulling the blanket over their heads and hoping the storm will pass. For others, there is also a genuine belief that if you just jump in a spasm of reaction, you could do some things detrimental to a good deliberative process.

Lots of members have been appalled at the kind of Gilded Age mentality of the party. Others felt like they had to take one for the team.