Ed Markey: “I thank the Senator from Colorado, and I rise to echo the sentiments of the Senator from Colorado. I first want to thank…”

“I thank the Senator from Colorado, and I rise to echo the sentiments of the Senator from Colorado. I first want to thank the Senator for all of his great work on this bill, for all of the hearings that took place in the subcommittee, all of the various interest groups who had to be worked with in order to make sure that this bill came to pass. So I just want to thank the Senator from Colorado and thank his staff for the great work. This bill is a historic bill. It is a very important bill. It could not have happened without the Senator, and I thank him for all of his incredible leadership on this issue. I want to thank my own staff for all of their great work on this issue as well. We had an incredible bipartisan partnership that was created between the Senator from Colorado and the Senator from Massachusetts, but our staffs worked very closely together. This bill, the Gardner-Markey Asia Reassurance Initiative Act, is a very important bill, and I want to speak about this bill, but in doing so, I am actually speaking about something that is broader, something more important, something of more lasting consequence to international peace and stability, and something more critical to the economic well- being, security, and fundamental rights of Americans and millions of others around the globe.…”