Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague for his constructive observations there. With respect to the Gang of 8 legislation, yes, it passed through this body, and, yes, I voted against that, as did a number of my colleagues. My view is, that was a piece of legislation that while it entailed a lot of work by a lot of people who were trying to make things better, it was doomed at the outset for failure because the message of that bill and of those who were pushing it was essentially you either pass all of this bill and all of its reforms--a large number of which and the majority of which I agreed with--or you pass nothing. We were literally told that. It is either this entire package or it is nothing. We spent weeks in the Committee on the Judiciary debating it and discussing it. I personally proposed dozens of amendments to that. What emerged at the end of that from the committee was a--this has been 6 years, so my colleague will forgive me if I don't remember the exact numbers. It was about a 700-page bill. When we got to the floor, what we debated and discussed was substituted out at the last minute. What we ended up getting was another bill that was, as I recall, 1,200 pages long. It was a different bill. The message was the same with both of them. This is a package deal. You either reform all of what this bill reforms and do it at once or you get none of it. Many of the sponsors of that legislation made clear that they would oppose any smaller effort.…”