Political Quotes

“we have spent 2 weeks on the immigration bill, and we listened to hour after hour of debate. I don't think there is a single Senator, no matter how one may have finally voted on the motion to proceed or not to proceed to the bill, who doesn't see an urgent need to fix our badly broken immigration system. Even those people who oppose this legislation vehemently believe the system is broken and needs to be fixed. So everyone agrees that we need to fix it, and I think the best way to fix it is to legislate. When it came time to vote on the bipartisan compromise last Thursday, 7 Republicans joined with 38 Democrats to invoke cloture. Let us put that in proper perspective. Fourth-fifths of Democrats voted to proceed to complete this legislation, and one-seventh of the Republicans voted to proceed. That is 80 percent and 14 percent--80 percent of the Democrats said move forward and 14 percent of the Republicans said move forward. Eighty-six percent of the Republicans said no. Today, in an hour or so, I am going to send a letter to President Bush to lay out my hope that we can still move forward on this legislation, but I want him to know that further progress will require active support from more Republicans, which is something he has to make sure his Republicans understand.”