Political Quotes

“I thank Senator Whitehouse. Mr. President, I would like to conclude by thanking my colleagues for their help. First of all, thanks to Senator Durbin for working with this Senator over the last couple of years in developing this legislation. I thank my other cosponsors as well. I thank Senator Booker, Senator Whitehouse, and Senator Flake, who have joined us today. This is truly a bipartisan, bicameral effort that brings support from across the political spectrum. Excessive mandatory minimums do not make us safer. The last 30 years have shown us that they are applied unevenly and they leave a gaping hole in the communities they impact most heavily. Now we as a society have to pick up the tab. We must decide if we will continue to pay the high fiscal and social costs that mandatory minimums impose. It is important for us to remember these costs do have many manifestations. Sometimes in this body we focus only on the fiscal pricetag that can be expressed in raw numbers, but doing that allows us to ignore too often the high human costs--the families and the communities that have lost brothers, sons, fathers, uncles, and nephews, people who could be back in their communities contributing meaningfully to their success, who are instead sent away for sometimes far too long of a prison sentence. We can continue down this current path or if we could try something smarter, that perhaps would be better.…”