Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator. I think that is very wise insight. On the question of immigration, Congress has been irresponsible. The American people have pleaded with us to end the illegality and create a lawful system that serves the national interest--a system we can be proud of. And for 30 years Congress has failed. The Senator's amendment requiring that vote by Congress to assure we do what we have promised to do reminds me of what happened in 2007-- another bill that was a comprehensive immigration bill on the floor. I opposed that bill. It was stronger than this bill, considerably, in a lot of different ways, but it failed because we didn't have confidence about the future. In the course of that debate, I think maybe shortly after the bill failed, we had an amendment to build a certain amount of fencing on the border. I offered that amendment, and it passed overwhelmingly. Republicans and Democrats, virtually everybody, voted to build more fencing at the border--700 miles out of about a 1,700-mile border. Everybody was for that. But that was just the first vote, as our colleagues know. The second vote was whether anybody would appropriate any money to build the fence. So not long afterwards up comes an appropriations bill for homeland security and it had no money for the fence in it. Our colleagues, going back home: I voted to build a fence. But here we have a bill on the floor that doesn't have any money to build a fence. The fence wasn't going to get built.…”