Political Quotes

“Thank you very much, Representative O'Rourke. I really appreciate your work on this issue. You have been doing a great job of really kind of setting the facts straight about this issue. There has been a lot of rhetoric out there about what immigration means. And the fact that you have worked so hard to bring recognition about the economic benefits that the border has, particularly to our State of Texas, and you have been very tremendous in your efforts, I really, really do appreciate that. I wanted to just talk about the fact how important the relationship is--the economic impact that you talk about all the time--how important it is to Texas and the United States. According to the United States Trade Representative, U.S. goods and services traded with Mexico totaled an estimated $500-plus billion in 2015. Mexico was the United States' second largest goods export market in 2015. In 2013, Texas, our home State of Texas exported over $109 billion in goods with Mexico, and that was a 63 percent increase since 2008. It is really hard to argue with those numbers. It just shows how healthy the relationship is with Mexico and about how incredibly foolish it would be to try to create barriers between our two countries that would cause economic harm to both Mexico and the United States and our border State of Texas.…”