Roy Blunt: “I am pleased to come and talk today. This is a week where we had all anticipated a return to the Senate, where ideas are…”

“I am pleased to come and talk today. This is a week where we had all anticipated a return to the Senate, where ideas are widely debated. I was standing by the majority leader last week when he was talking about this, and he said that we will let a thousand flowers bloom. It didn't sound like something Senator McConnell would normally use as a reference, but he did, and I am thinking, well, that would be a good thing, to see a thousand different ideas widely debated on the Senate floor. So far this week, there has not been any debate because we can't seem to agree on who votes on what first. I think that is a particular level of dysfunction that we should all be concerned about. For the Senate to do its work, we have to be willing to vote and we have to be willing to take some hard votes. My sense of politics today is, whether you have taken the vote or not, someone is going to accuse you of taking that vote. So you might as well not worry about the vote you take; just worry about the work we get done and whatever votes are necessary to be taken to get that done. On this topic, it does seem to me that we have two issues here that should be solved, two issues on which there is broad agreement. I have said for a long time that there are really three questions in the immigration debate that need to be answered: No. 1, how do we secure the border; No. 2, what are the legitimate workforce needs of the country; and No.…”