Pete Sessions: “I thank Senator McConnell. I say to Senator Smith, we appreciate your comments and thoughtful insight into this very…”

“I thank Senator McConnell. I say to Senator Smith, we appreciate your comments and thoughtful insight into this very important subject for our Nation. We want to do the right thing with regard to all of our citizens. We want to have a nation in which civil rights are protected and where everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in the American ideal. It is a very, very important issue. I thank Senator McConnell for developing the kind of amendment that will accomplish, I think, the legitimate goals of those who would like to see more opportunity in contracting Federal road contracts while at the same time protecting the great constitutional privileges that all of us in this Nation have a right to count on. I serve on both the Environment and Public Works Committee, from which this legislation came, and the Judiciary Committee. In the Environment and Public Works Committee, we had no hearings, took no testimony, did no study as to the advisability and the practicality of how these preferences work out in real life. For a number of years, I was a U.S. attorney and had the opportunity to prosecute criminal cases of all kinds and sorts. I have a distinct recollection of a case involving a minority individual who had gotten, I think, a $250,000 contract primarily because he was a minority. He was not the low bidder. He got the contract because of the preference set-asides in this highway bill.”