Sam Gejdenson: “there were times and there may still be times in this country today where there are States where you can get married if…”

“there were times and there may still be times in this country today where there are States where you can get married if you are 14 or 15. In my State that is statutory rape. There were times in this country where in many States it took years to get a divorce, sometimes almost impossible. People could fly to I think Las Vegas and other places and get a divorce almost overnight. We did not rush to the floor to ban those actions, to make them not apply to the State where the individual is a resident. What we face here is a challenge of the majority party, the Republicans, and the failure of their entire agenda, and they need a new scapegoat. To try to salvage their political tailspin, we are here on the floor today trying to pick on the powerless. The politics works very well. It is not popular out in the countryside. It is a difficult issue for most Americans to deal with. But if we want to protect families, then we ought to give families health care. If we want to protect families, we need to protect their pensions. If we want to protect families, we ought not be raiding Medicare to give tax breaks to billionaires. If we want to protect families, we need to protect their pensions, not to come here today with a show-stopper that does very little to protect families and I doubt will get the political gain that many are seeking in this legislation.”