Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we are going to be joined here shortly by the Senator from New Hampshire, Mrs. Shaheen, but I do want to mention one other aspect. Many of my colleagues have mentioned the incredibly important role that then-Senator Biden, now-Vice President Biden played in drafting this first bill in 1994. Well, there was another Senator who played an important role, and he is someone from Minnesota; that is, the late Senator Paul Wellstone, always with his wife Sheila with him at his side working on this important issue. When we lost Paul and Sheila in 2002, Minnesotans lost a tireless champion in Congress; Americans lost what was always called--Paul was called ``the conscience of the Senate''; and women everywhere lost two powerful voices on domestic violence issues. I went back through the transcripts and looked at some of the speeches Senator Wellstone gave, before his tragic plane crash, about domestic violence and some of the things he said. Here are some. Of course, I would never do justice to him as he stood on the floor, but he said things like this. He said: We can no longer stand by and say that it is someone else's problem. What are we waiting for? Too many have spoken with their voices and with their lives, and this violence must end. He also said this: Once upon a time we used to say it is nobody's business. We do not believe that any longer.…”