Political Quotes

“I rise in opposition to the three amendments that have been spoken about--the McCain amendment, the Cornyn amendment, and the McCain-Kyl amendment. I will get into some detail in a few minutes about the opposition, but it relates to three points. First, President Obama has a tough, smart, targeted $500 million package that will greatly increase resources at the border, and we need it. Crime has increased, as my friend from Arizona has said. We need it. So, No. 1, there is a very good plan in place. No. 2, this is a huge amount of money--$2.5 billion--that my colleagues, who talk about fiscal moderation, are requesting, and much of it will not go to securing the border. It is sort of throwing an enormous amount of money at the problem that is not as carefully thought out, not as targeted, and not as effective, quite frankly, as President Obama's program. No. 3, it takes the money out of the stimulus bill. Well, there is a border problem in Texas and Arizona that affects all of us, and we want to solve it. The President and we are working to do that. But we have a jobs problem in this country, too, and this is the worst kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The stimulus money will go to creating jobs. If we ask the people in, say, Michigan or Ohio or Rhode Island or New York what is the No. 1 issue? Jobs. This money is being taken away from job creation and used, as I say, in a not effective, overmagnified way.”