Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this important amendment, the Deutch-Foster amendment. First of all, this is the right thing to do, but to bring the conversation back to what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle pivot to in almost every policy discussion we have in this body--cutting spending. In a budget age where many in this body celebrate the draconian and harmful cuts of the sequester, it seems we've come to accept as the norm indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts that in many cases fall on the backs of the most vulnerable among us. Cutting spending in this Congress no longer equates to targeted cuts to inefficient or duplicative government programs to root out waste. Cutting spending in this budget climate is simply about the bottom line. But it doesn't have to be that way. This amendment is the perfect example of how we can cut spending in a smart and efficient way while defending those most vulnerable. By ending the arbitrary 34,000-bed mandate for immigration detention, we can cut spending and do the right thing. How's this for a bottom line: alternatives to immigration detention save money. We're spending more than $5 million a day to detain immigrants, 45 percent of which have no criminal record, according to Human Rights Watch. That equates to roughly $164 per day per detainee for detention and roughly $2 billion per year.…”