Political Quotes

“I so appreciate the statements of my colleagues who traveled with me to South America. As has been indicated, Bolivia, if not the poorest country in this hemisphere, is the second poorest. You land in an airport, the highest airport in the world--13,400 feet. As my distinguished friend, the Senator from Utah, said, President Nixon said that people should travel, Members of Congress. I use as an example Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was an anti- Communist, and that is an understatement, but Ronald Reagan always spoke to his enemies. But for Ronald Reagan's insistence that there be bilateral negotiations with the Soviet Union on a constant, frequent basis, I am not sure the Cold War would have ended. Not only did he personally meet with the Soviet leaders time after time, people working in his State Department were in constant contact with the Soviet Union. Members of Congress should travel. There is no better example than these three countries to which we traveled. They are begging for the attention of the United States, and they are getting no attention. They are not begging for the attention of Venezuela and Cuba, but they are getting lots of attention. As a result of that, they have a significant amount of influence where the United States should be the one exerting the influence. They want us to be involved. We should be involved. Ninety percent of the cocaine in the world comes from the Andean region. Shouldn't we be involved? But we are not.…”