Political Quotes

“I agree that this is a very important subject. I agree that we should be acting to try to diminish illegal immigration. It is for that reason that I deplore as seriously as I can both the method by which this bill has been considered and the substances. I am a member of the Subcommittee on Immigration as I have been since coming to Congress. I am very proud of the bipartisan efforts in which I participated in 1986 and in 1990 and at other times to deal with immigration legislation. For the first time in the 16 years I have been a Member of Congress, gross partisanship has run this process. Those of us who participated in good faith have assurances from the chairman of the subcommittee that this would be done in a bipartisan way in the deliberations at the committee stage. Those of us who were Democrats were completely excluded from the process to the point where, despite our repeated requests, we could not even see a copy of this complex legislation until 9:30 last night. My colleagues will remember that the Republican leadership was ready to push this bill through before the recess, and only our objection stopped it. They were going to put it through without our having a chance to see it. Then, despite the fact that it was ready to be passed in August, they withheld it from us, despite our requests to be able to look at it until last night. This substitution of partisan exclusion for a bipartisan process is the reason why we may very well not have a bill.”