Political Quotes

“Mr. President, thank you, and I thank my colleague from Texas for his specifics there, and I know he is trying to make the bill a better bill. I have to say, as I understand it, this is the very same amendment that was defeated in committee. It was defeated by a bipartisan vote of 12 to 6. It was defeated for two reasons. Let me take a step back. The two reasons are, one, its cost goes through the roof, and there is no way to pay for it in the Cornyn amendment. It is estimated it could be, in the original amendment, as much as $25 billion. Now, maybe the number of border agents was reduced. I do not know if my colleague has done that, but that is a huge expense, and an unnecessary expense because our bill, the proposal that is before us, does a huge amount on border security for much lower cost. Mr. President, $25 billion is a lot of money. Second, we do have triggers in our bill, but they are achievable and specific because this bill is a careful compromise. We want to do two things. We want to have border security, absolutely. I have always said a watch word of this bill is that the American people will be fair and have a commonsense approach to both future legal immigration and the 11 million who are living here in the shadows provided, and only provided, we prevent future waves of illegal immigration. We do that in three ways. One is the E-Verify system. We both agree that should be in place before there is a path to citizenship. One is fixing up exit-entry.…”