Political Quotes

“I want to speak today on the amendment. I know the Senator from Texas, my friend and someone I respect, made numerous comments about the bill. But actually the vote we have today is about the border security amendment that has been negotiated and a lot of people have worked on. I know some of his comments refer to some portions of the amendment. Mostly, he was talking about the bill itself. The issue before us today is the border security amendment the Senator from North Dakota and myself and many others worked on. I want to put this in context, if I can. Fifteen days ago in the Republican caucus at what we call our conference lunch, there was a discussion about the ways of trying to make this immigration bill better. The Senator from North Dakota had a base bill dealing with border security, and many of us at the time said what we could do is take a base border security amendment, expand it, and try to accommodate many of the desires of people in our caucus with other provisions in it that many Senators here in this body wanted to see happen. Two Fridays ago, we actually had about 12 offices come together for a meeting to talk about many of those attributes they felt would make this bill better. So over time we developed a 115-page amendment--some people say 119-page amendment--dealing with not just border security but many issues people in this body thought would make this bill better.…”