Political Quotes

“I came to the floor to speak about and follow up on a 2-hour debate we had last night on the floor about amendments pending to this bill that are uncontested. But before I do, let me acknowledge the leadership for allowing Senator Toomey to come to the floor and offer his amendment. It is not one--although he has made some good points--that I can agree with or others will agree with. But at least he had the opportunity to come to the floor, present his amendment and ideas, make his arguments, and hopefully at some time the Senate can vote on that amendment. That is the process. In the underlying bill, these quotas and goals and numbers of visas were carefully and very fragilely compromised among Democrats and Republicans that serve as the basis of the underlying bill. So any major adjustments to that would undermine a comprehensive immigration bill. The bill we have to consider is not the perfect bill. We could have all written it differently. But the overriding objective to fix a system that is broken, to secure the border, to require taxes be paid, English spoken, behind the line after people who have come here legally, close these borders, improve technology, and give an economic impact to this country overrides, in my view, these important but not major issues. Having said that, there is an issue that I think deserves a tremendous amount of attention, and it is not just one amendment, it is 27 amendments.…”