Political Quotes

“I appreciate greatly the kind remarks of my colleague from New Jersey about my role in all of this. I do not want to make this a bouquet-tossing contest, but I do want the Senate to know and I want the country to know how important it has been that Senator Menendez has led this charge. As my colleague noted, human rights advocates, those who have been in the trenches in the fight against trafficking, have come together to work with us. Senator Menendez, since our debate in the committee, has led this fight. At that time, colleagues, the committee approved an important amendment to ensure that trade agreements with countries that drop the ball on trafficking get no special privileges here in the Congress. The reason that my colleague has put all of this time and energy and passion into it is that he understands--everyone here, Democrats and Republicans--that human trafficking is a plague that must be fought at every opportunity. So what Senator Menendez and I have done over the last few weeks is to work together to try to find a practical way to further improve the language in this original amendment. What these alterations--really improvements--are going to do is to create a new process by which the President will report to the Congress on the concrete, specific steps other countries are taking to crack down on trafficking.…”