On the recordFebruary 27, 2014
No. You raise an incredible point. I served 10 years, five terms in the Texas Legislature. This is my first term in Congress. But consider this: Last year, in 2013, we had what was, on record, the least productive Congress in American history. Something like only 58 bills went to the President's desk. So you can imagine in this place there is a lot of gridlock. The wheels, essentially, in 2013 came to a halt. But of all of the major issues, immigration reform is the one that had the most bipartisan support and the strongest support. And consider this for a second: I think it was sometime in the summer the President of the United States had a press conference over at the White House, and he had standing on either side of him the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the head of the AFL-CIO. Now, think about that for a second. How often do you have the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the head of the AFL-CIO standing next to each other agreeing on anything? But that is how deep and how profound the wide range of support is for comprehensive immigration reform. And it is not just business and labor, it is people from throughout the political spectrum: the evangelical community that, quite honestly, has been fairly conservative, so the religious community and the social advocates who are ordinarily on the left.…





