Political Quotes

“I know that when I come to the floor and remind my colleagues about my involvement in the 1986 immigration bill, it sounds like a broken record. I said early on this year that I wanted to educate my colleagues about the mistakes we made in 1986 so those mistakes were not repeated in the first immigration bill to pass the Senate since 1986. Because I was here in 1986, I thought I could share the experience we had. I know firsthand that we screwed up in that 1986 legislation. I was certain other Members in this body could learn from our mistakes. However, today we are right back to the same place, talking about the same problems, proposing the same solutions. In 1981, as a freshman Member of the Senate, I joined the Judiciary Committee and was very active in the subcommittee process. We sat down and wrote the legislation. We had 100 hours of hearings and 300 witnesses before we marked up that bill in May of 1982. Hundreds more hours and a dozen more hearings would take place before the bill actually became law in 1986. This year we had 6 days of hearings. We spent 18 hours and 10 minutes listening to outside witnesses. The Judiciary Committee received the bipartisan bill at 2:24 a.m. April 17. We held hearings April 19, 22, and 23. We heard from 26 witnesses in those 3 days. We heard from the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency union. We heard from economists and employers, law enforcement and lawyers, professors and advocacy groups.…”