Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank very much my colleague Senator Blumenthal. I want to associate myself with all the remarks of my colleague from Connecticut. Let me congratulate the riders from Team 26 for making it through such inclement weather, making it through such a challenging ride to bring these messages to the Halls of Congress and to the White House. It strikes me that there are similarities between this ride and the challenges ahead of us. Every tough ride is a long stretch of both peaks and valleys. The challenge is knowing there is another hill coming before you and not giving up, knowing that at the end of that long ride, there is reward. When we talk about the scope of our fight to change the laws of this country to try to put a dent in this epidemic of gun violence, we have to view our journey the same way. There are going to be peaks and there are going to be valleys. There will be moments of triumph where we change the laws for the better, where we see progress, as we have in Connecticut, where a new State law has resulted in a 40-percent diminution in the number of gun homicides. Then there are the valleys-- moments like we had here in early 2013, where despite 90 percent of Americans supporting the idea that you should prove you are not a criminal before you buy a gun, we weren't able to pass that law because of a filibuster here. Every great change is defined not only by failures but by peaks and valleys, as was their ride.…”