“As a government watchdog, I'm always looking for ways to make government smaller, more efficient, and fairer.”

“As much as I hate to say it, what I'm coming to realize is that all we're really able to do is put the brakes on. Imagine going real fast in a Flintstones car, and my heel is out there. I went to Washington to change the world, and all I can do is put my heel out.”

“Census data influences decisions made from Main Street to Wall Street, in Congress and with the Federal Reserve. Not to mention, the American people who look to, and trust, the data the government releases on our nation's unemployment, state of our economy, and health insurance coverage.”

“Companies that are hosting Web sites or do a lot of teleconferencing need a lot of bandwidth going both ways.”

“Congress has the constitutional authority to investigate the other agencies of government. We are the watchdogs of the taxpayer's money, and we have the right to know how that money is being spent and to conduct oversight over the government.”

“Do I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in any information that I share with a company? My Google searches? The emails I send? Do I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in anything but maybe a letter I hand deliver to my wife?”

“Drug testing for recipients of various welfare programs - I really think that's something that needs to be considered.”

“Every member of Congress has highways in their district.”

“Everybody wants to help folks out. But we've got a system where you can stay on unemployment for an awfully long time. And I think we need to create a system of decreasing benefits over time to encourage you to get a job.”

“Hillary Clinton and her media machine try to dismiss, but anybody who understands anything about how email works - and this is millennials in particular, who grew up on the Internet - know that you're an idiot to keep sensitive information on a server in your house.”

“Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have left the U.S. with better relations with Iran and Cuba and worse relations with allies like Israel.”

“Historically, the Justice Department has been Congress' ally in fighting wrongdoing in government, but under this Justice Department and Eric Holder, rather than being the people's attorney, Eric Holder sees himself as the president's attorney and he'll do anything to defend the president.”

“How is having every phone call that I make to my wife, to my daughter, relevant to any terror investigation?”

“Human trafficking robs victims of their basic human rights, and it occurs right under our noses. Many efforts have been focused in other regions of the world, but this is a major problem here at home.”

“I actually enjoy having the Capitol view. We started referring to it as the trillion dollar view.”

“I am running on the fact that I am doing a good job listening to people.”

“I believe that the kids are innocent victims in this. We spent money educating them. Many of them don't speak a word of Spanish, and we're thinking of deporting them. That doesn't make sense.”

“I cannot ignore this reality, and I encourage my all colleagues to join me in this fight to end modern day slavery in our own backyard.”

“I did vote to defund the Obama program that defers deporting the so-called DREAMers, because that was the president's decision, and the president shouldn't unilaterally get to decide what laws to enforce or not enforce.”

“I feel like my mandate when I was elected was to go reduce the size of government, lower taxes, and increase freedom, and freedom isn't free, and sometimes you have to make a small sacrifice to move forward with what you're after.”

“I see our veterans as American heroes, not as cartoon characters.”

“I serve and answer to the Texans I represent - not the Hollywood elite.”

“I think a fair amount of my votes were 'not-for-Ortiz,' votes and I'm going to have to work hard to earn the 'for Blake' votes.”

“I think anybody who's had an alcoholic in their life, or somebody with a drug problem, realizes that until things get bad enough, there's no incentive to change.”

“I think it's really tough being in Donald Trump's shoes, when you've got the media looking to put the worst possible spin to everything that you say.”

“I think that we're so generous in some of our social problems that people are unwilling to get a job outside in the heat. Rather than get 15 dollars to go get roofing, they'd rather get 9 or 10 dollars in benefits.”

“I think there are several departments we could completely get rid of, and we wouldn't miss it.”

“I think there's no problem getting through the House a pathway to legal status. A pathway to citizenship is going to be tougher, but I think it is potentially doable, if we can show the American people that the border is secure.”

“I took an oath to protect the Constitution, and protecting the Constitution means not letting the president bypass the separation of powers.”

“I understand that, for some, everything is political.”

“I went in with the youthful vigor that I could single-handedly change the world. But you fast come to the realization that you're 1/435th of one-half of one-third of the government.”

“I will support a path to citizenship if it does not fall within the definition of amnesty, and we've got to define what amnesty is in this country.”

“I would consider it to be immoral to take a paycheck when the people in the federal government are not.”

“If I were to leave Congress and want to start Farenthold TV, it would be very difficult. The fewer players there are, the fewer the opportunities to build a big enough audience to get on.”

“If you are just using the service to look at Web sites and download e-mail, then a DSL line may be cheaper. It is when you have more data going out that wireless can make a difference.”

“I'm a Texan - my idea of gun control is hitting what you aim at and nothing else.”

“I'm committed to voting to repeal Obamacare or defending it as much as possible.”

“I'm doing a good job in Washington.”

“I'm not going to sell Donald Trump short. I think the American people saw something in him.”

“I'm still on the Trump train.”

“Immigration specifically was laid out in the Congress, giving the power of Congress to create a uniform system of naturalization.”

“In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld President Obama's overreaching mandate that forces every American to purchase health insurance or face a fine.”

“In an urban area, you're not going to be an hour away from another post office.”

“In cutting government, we cut a huge variety of programs, a lot of which I would have liked to see increase, and a lot of which I'd like to see decreased more.”

“It's about going to where your voters are.”

“It's Congress' job to keep an eye on the other agencies and the workings of the entire government. It is our constitutional duty.”

“It's said that you can tell a lot about someone by who opposes them. In the case of liberal pundit Bill Maher - a man who called America's actions cowardly in the wake of 9/11 and who mocked WWII veterans who wanted to visit the monument built in their honor - I wear his disapproval of me as a badge of honor.”

“I've already composed and written a letter to the House administration telling them to withhold my paycheck in the event of a lapse of appropriations.”

“I've been through several of his campaigns, and I can tell you nobody can out-campaign Rick Perry.”

“I've got a quad copter on my Christmas list, as I suspect quite a few people do.”

“My constituents feel betrayed by the promise that Reagan made, that if we grant amnesty, we'll then secure the border. We obviously didn't do that.”

“My deal is you start as far to the right as you can get, and go to the conference committee with the Senate, and hopefully end up with something you can live with.”

“My message on immigration is that the people who want to come to this country, by and large, even those who have done it illegally, are coming for the right reasons, not to take advantage of our welfare system.”

“My subcommittee will be thoroughly investigating this issue and demanding answers from Census officials on allegations that the Census Bureau is changing the wording of survey questions used to determine our nation's annual report on health insurance coverage.”

“Nobody in the Washington regulatory bureaucracy gets fired for saying no.”

“Nobody likes to make a hard decision, because you're running every two years.”

“One of the problems the Republican Party has had is that we're too fast to compromise. You can compromise on the little stuff, but you can't compromise on your core principles.”

“Running on the pledge to end two wars, President Obama has the country entangled in three: Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and that doesn't include the American's foray into Libya.”

“Sometimes you've got to make a hard decision, and there's a real reluctance to make hard decisions in Washington.”

“The American people should not be footing the bill for federal employees who stonewall Congress or rewarding government officials' bad behavior.”

“The census should not be political.”

“The fourth amendment specifically was designed to prohibit general warrants. How could collecting every piece of phone data be perceived as anything but a general warrant?”

“The government was built on compromising. And it's frustrating as hell.”

“The pro-immigration people are really having a fit saying that I don't care about the children.”

“The purpose of the criminal justice system is both to rehabilitate and to punish. If we can rehabilitate somebody, that's a huge, huge win.”

“There is no Republican out there who wants a Hillary Clinton presidency.”

“'Those people' is a bad word.”

“We all want to raise our children well.”

“We all went up to Washington on a mission to change things. What I found is that the Founding Fathers set it up where it's a little more difficult to do. We've got the Senate and the president to deal with.”

“We can't get serious about immigration reform until we stop people from crossing the border illegally.”

“We have testimony saying, and I think common sense also dictates, that in a failed state like Syria, you don't have any government information, police reports to rely on to vet somebody. So there's no way to do a background check from somebody coming out of Syria. There's no way we can find out whether they're safe or not.”

“We need to be talking about things like the DREAM Act. We need to also be talking about e-verify. We also need to be talking about border security.”

“We've got the power of the purse in the Congress.”

“What message do we send to America if we impeach Obama and he gets away?”

“With President Obama restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, the immigration preferential treatment given to Cubans... no longer makes sense.”

“You can't not approve a merger because you don't like the companies' politics. That's just not right.”

“You turn on the TV, and you hear all these guys: 'Republican Party in disarray. Turmoil in Washington.' I don't think that's the case.”

“You've got to do the same sort of outreach to Hispanics that you do to any other group. They want to see their congressman.”