Political Quotes

“Mr. President, as tempted as I am to respond to my good friend from Maryland about the ongoing Democratic filibuster of the Homeland Security funding, I want to spend just a few minutes talking about a topic where there is broad and growing consensus, where both parties have found common ground, and I am talking about the issue of reforming America's prison system. Pretty much everyone agrees that our prisons are dangerously overcrowded. I think there are roughly 215,000 inmates in Federal custody. And everyone pretty much agrees that by and large people who are in prison are someday going to get out of prison. That, of course, brings about the concern about repeat crimes or recidivism and the fact that it is way too high. I think in many instances it is because we have simply not done enough or maybe have even given up on helping transition people who actually want to transition to a more productive life and providing them with the tools they need to do so. The hard part about dealing with what I have just described is we have to come up with a solution that addresses these problems without jeopardizing public safety. That, obviously, is a given. It is a challenge, to be sure, but it makes it even more important to find bipartisan consensus and to actually accomplish what we can.…”