Political Quotes

“Thank you, and I know Senator Menendez is going to speak on this topic as well. We intended to come to the Senate floor and offer a unanimous consent agreement to pass sanctions in Venezuela. First of all, let me thank the White House for what they announced yesterday: sanctions against human rights violators and corrupt government officials in Venezuela who have been involved for a very long time--but especially since the 4th of February--in grotesque human rights violations against young people and all people in Venezuela. It is a topic that is not often talked about unfortunately these days, given all the issues that are going on around the world. What is happening in Venezuela in our own hemisphere is startling. First, you have the complete erosion of democracy which has been going on since the reign of Hugo Chavez and now with Nicolas Maduro it has gotten progressively worse. We have been seeing this and talking about this since earlier this year, when thousands of young people in Venezuela took to the streets to protest what was happening and they were met with some of the most brutal attacks we have seen in this hemisphere for quite a while. We documented that on the floor consistently. So beginning from that moment forward, we have worked in this body to seek sanctions against those individuals, against the people responsible for those human rights violations who also happened to be, by the way, incredibly corrupt.…”