Political Quotes

“Mr. President, people wonder as they watch the Senate how bills get started. One of the bills that I have worked on probably the hardest in my career got started 11 years ago when there was a phone call to my Senate office in Chicago. It was a phone call from a friend of ours, Duffie Adleson, who was managing a program called the Merit Music Program. It is a wonderful program in Chicago that offers opportunities for free musical instruments and free music lessons for kids from some of the poorest schools in town. The net result of it is a life-changing experience. One hundred of the Merit Music Program graduates go on to college. It is transformative. Well, she had a story to tell me. It was about a young lady named Tereza Lee, Korean, who was a child prodigy when it came to the piano. She played it so well she had been offered many scholarships, including to the Manhattan Conservatory of Music. When she went to fill out her application, one of the questions was, What is your citizenship or nationality? She turned to her mother and said: What is it, Mom? Her mom said: I do not know. You see, they brought Tereza to America when she was 2 years old on a visitor's visa. Her mom said: We never filed anything after that. Mom and dad became citizens. Brother and sister born here automatically became citizens, but Tereza was a question mark. What am I? So she called Duffie. Duffie called the office, and we checked the law.…”