Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. I will give a relatively short answer. First of all, there is nobody in this House on either side of the aisle--certainly none of the proponents of this legislation--who want to in any way limit the President's ability to protect America, whether it is from terrorists, whether it is from the coronavirus or some other threat that manifestly presents itself to the safety and well-being of the American people. {time} 1145 What the bill attempts to do is simply to preclude violating, in effect, the Constitution of the United States in either making a religious test for admission to the United States of America, which, very frankly, a number of statements of the President would indicate that, in the past, that was what he intended to do and, in fact, was manifest in the very broad reach, unrelated to whether somebody was a terrorist but related to what their religion was or some other distinction unrelated. Now, obviously, both the health and safety of the American people would not preclude the President from acting to protect that. I think we would all agree on that. But, clearly, we believe the President has, in fact, gone far beyond specific ways and means to protect the American people and simply preclude people, as I said, of a particular religion, a particular nationality, or some other broad base unrelated to the specific items to which you referred, with which I think most of us agree.…”