Political Quotes

“I rise today, regretfully, to discuss the faltering state of democracy in Russia. I say ``regretfully,'' because during my more than 31 years in the U.S. Senate, I have consistently striven to improve relations between our country and Russia. For example, a few years ago, despite severe U.S. budgetary constraints and significant foreign policy differences with Moscow, I introduced legislation that when enacted substantially increased funding for Muskie Fellowships for graduate students from Russia. During my time in the Senate--which has spanned the last decade of Brezhnev, the brief ruling periods of Andropov and Chernenko in the early 1980s, the lengthier and stormy tenures of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and since 2000 the era of Vladimir Putin--I have always believed that a constructive relationship with Russia is in the best interest of that great country, and is a vital national interest of the United States. During the Soviet period our ties were based overwhelmingly on strategic considerations.”