Political Quotes

“I want to thank my friend and colleague from Mississippi for her comments on this subject. I am down here on the floor to also talk about the crisis at the border--the humanitarian crisis, the Homeland Security crisis, and a crisis that is resulting in cartels making $800 million a year in human trafficking. I joined a bipartisan delegation 2 weeks ago. We visited the border. It was very productive. It was one of the first bipartisan delegations in quite some time. The reason that was important is, if you go down there with a partisan delegation, you are only going to actually talk about one side of the issue. If you go down there with a bipartisan delegation, you can talk about what we need to do on a bipartisan basis to solve the crisis at the border. I want to start where Senator Hyde-Smith finished--the humanitarian crisis. I am one of the Members who has been trying to negotiate a bipartisan immigration reform bill that has border security and asylum reform in it. I had a lot of my staff ask me: Why would you do that? You know it is going to be unpopular. You are going to get criticized from the left for going too far. You are going to get criticized from the right for having any discussion about immigration reform. I have been down to the border several times.…”