Political Quotes

“I first want to say before my colleague leaves--I know he has a packed day--when I came to the U.S. Senate, I found a friend, I found a mentor, and I found a leader on issues of justice. The incredible friend I have in the Senator from Illinois--he has been leading on issues from immigration reform and fighting for Dreamers all the way to being the principal leader on the Democratic side for the passage of the First Step Act. I will never forget that he invited me to the White House in my earliest days with then-President Obama, centering me on that table. I had just gotten here, and he then was talking about these issues--the issues of mass incarceration, the issues of racial discrimination and incarceration. What I rise to talk about really is an issue that my colleague has been dealing with for 35 years. He gave important history. It was a bipartisan issue 35 years ago when the Senate and House of Representatives voted to pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, and the President signed it into law that year. He said, very specifically, one of the things it did was create a massive sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. The bill made it so that five grams of crack cocaine--the example that my colleague gave--carried the same mandatory minimum prison sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine. That is a 100- to-1 disparity. What is very powerful to me is what Maya Angelou said. She said: Do the best you can until you know better.…”