Political Quotes

“I went to Central Asia and I know my colleague has spent a lot of time on the border, and sometimes our constituents ask us why we go. They think it is some kind of a junket. It is to go to see a couple of things. It is to go to see these Krises around the borders, around the world who are on the front lines each and every day, to put a face with the people on the front line. Central Asia, I was over there and I took a video camera, and I ran into about 10 or 12 constituents who are in K-2, who were at the Moscow embassy, who were on the U.S. George Washington, who were in Bahrain, and what we did is we just asked them to send a message back home. And we asked them, who do you want me to call? And you end up calling parents, husbands, grandparents; and each of these Krises around the world have loved ones that care deeply about them. So we have got to, number one, just to meet our constituents and to demonstrate that we care and we are concerned about the environment that we have put them in. The second reason we go, and my colleague has gone along the border, is to find out whether we have given them the resources to do the job. What my colleague has tragically found out in Arizona is maybe we have not given them the resources, and maybe we have not paid as much attention to this issue as we should have. And for us to put our front line folks in that type of a position, my colleague has identified it, Congress can no longer say we did not know. We now know.”