Lloyd Bentsen: “This is an emotional resolution. This is from the heart and not from the head. That is what the problem is that we are…”

“This is an emotional resolution. This is from the heart and not from the head. That is what the problem is that we are dealing with today. There is no question we are all frustrated with Mexico. We are frustrated that they have not made the progress that we want them to make. But if we look at Mexico in this last century, they are a changed country. They have made progress. They are moving from a one-party dictatorship to a multiparty democracy. For those of us who have lived along the border, those of us who have traveled and studied in Mexico, the change has been tremendous. This resolution does not move us forward. It moves us backward. Yes, we do not want more drugs on our streets, we want the Mexicans to do more, but we want to engage the Mexicans to do more. We do not want to push them back into that corner, and that is what this resolution would do. It would do it in a number of ways. First, we would be thumbing our nose at them. Second, we would be undercutting them in the financial markets throughout the world. We want to maintain confidence in the Mexican economy and stabilize the peso so it does not continue to devalue against the dollar so it does not create more exports into the United States but creates more exports back into Mexico.”