Political Quotes

“this amendment builds a little bit on what Senator Byrd is talking about. How the threats to the Nation are real, how to handle those threats, how much money we need, and where to put the money are all honest and genuine debates. But I think we found some common ground here as a nation from the last immigration debate. Senator Judd Gregg has been one of the leading advocates for stronger border security since I have been in the Senate. During the last immigration debate in terms of a comprehensive approach to solving immigration policy, one of the things we seemed to find common ground on was the idea of providing additional border security. So the amendment I have just offered, which will be cosponsored by Senators Gregg, Sessions, Kyl, Cornyn, McConnell, Domenici, McCain, Sununu, Martinez, Coleman, Specter, and many others, seeks to build on what we did in the last debate--to make it a reality in the area in which we have common ground. The amendment has $3 billion in terms of spending, emergency funding. I would argue that the border security situation in this country and visa overstays are emergencies and that we have lost operational control of our border. We have lost the ability to track people who come here on visas in terms of when their visas expire and whether they left, and we will pay a heavy price, not only economically and socially but from a national security perspective.”