On the recordApril 29, 2010
I traveled throughout the Soviet Union to captive nations with many of you, and I rose in those nations and said to the leaders, You need to give your people self-determination. Many of you have said the same thing on this floor. You've said it about tyrant governments that have kept their peoples from practicing their own religions, from speaking their own languages, from adopting their own laws. You have spoken out against it. They were foreign nations, and it was easy to do. But now we talk about Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States of America. What Mr. Pierluisi seeks to do, what his Governor wants to do, what two-thirds of his legislature want to do--the senate and the house--is to give them the opportunity to exercise that self-determination. Now, on this floor, we have adopted an amendment, for which many have spoken, that we ought to give four alternatives rather than three. We've done that. There will now be four alternatives for the people of Puerto Rico on the second ballot. Let us now defeat this amendment designed only to defeat this bill.
