Political Quotes

“Madam President, I am really pleased to be here on the floor with my colleagues who just want to get something done on the border. I mean, how long have we talked about this? Senator Kaine talked about 2013. I was here as well. It was an amazingly difficult piece of legislation to negotiate at the time, but it was comprehensive, and in the end, it was a big bipartisan vote in the U.S. Senate. I agree with Senator Kaine. When it went to the House, we thought: OK. We put together this comprehensive bill that is not only border security, it is about how we manage and create a pathway to citizenship and address young people who have been here their whole lives--who have been here as juniors--and for agriculture jobs, which I work with all the time. Our farmers need ag labor and want to know there is a legal path to be able to have people work here. It covered everything. At that time, Republicans in the House didn't want to deal with it, didn't want to solve it. So we have been down this road before, but I really did think, this time, in the context of the national security bill, the demand from Republican colleagues, that they wouldn't consider the supplemental security issues without a tough border bill. I said: OK, here we go. We all know, there were major negotiations, months of negotiations. Senator Murphy, Senator Sinema, Senator Lankford--everybody was stretching and pushing and trying to get to a spot for something that would really, really make a difference.…”