Political Quotes

“I find myself in a situation where I will be voting against the bill that I have cosponsored. At this moment, I am not allowed to ask unanimous consent to have my name removed, but I do think it is important that I explain my actions. When I was first asked to cosponsor this, it was to call for a commission. I now see this commission will cost the taxpayer $1 million for up to 7 years, which is up to $7 million. When we look a little bit further into this, originally it was a few families that had been wronged, but as we heard in the debate, the entire States of California, Nevada, and Utah, were basically seized from the Government of Mexico, as well as portions of Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, portions of Colorado and Wyoming. So we would be basically seeing a situation where just a few people would be compensated. The second part that I think is important to state is, yes, we have to look at this historically. Yes, these people probably had claims given to them by the Government of Mexico, a government that, in effect, took the land from Spain. But who did the King of Spain take it from? He took it from the folks who lived there when the Conquistadors came over. We are basically opening a can of worms and I do not think anyone has any idea where it ends.”