On the recordNovember 19, 2015
I look forward to working with my colleague from Pennsylvania on that sound bipartisan policy he is talking about, and I want to talk a little bit about that today. He mentioned Senator Vandenberg, who famously said that partisanship ends at the water's edge. I think he would have been surprised by President Obama's comments beyond the water's edge in Turkey yesterday, where he attacked Republicans who dared to talk about the need for us to ensure that we know who is coming to our shores and specifically with regard to refugees and having a proper vetting process in place. In fact, the House of Representatives--with over 40 votes from Democrats--I understand just voted on legislation today, which is a veto-proof majority, to say we ought to tighten requirements for people who want to come to our shores. So we do need to work together. We do need to ensure that partisanship does not get in the way of working together as Americans to solve these problems. The partisan speech from across the ocean, well beyond our shores, was an example of where we are not meeting the standards Mr. Vandenberg set out. As we all know now, last weekend ISIS terrorists killed over 130 innocent people in a series of very well-coordinated attacks in Paris. I would say these attacks did not occur in isolation. They were one but a series of attacks that occurred within a 24-hour period. Sometimes we forget the context of these attacks.…
