Political Quotes

“I am thrilled to join my colleagues on the floor to talk about the importance of this border security bill, but I am also going to talk about my own naivete and admit to being a very naive Senator. When I came to the Senate in 2013 with Senator Murphy, one of the first things we did in June of my first year in the Senate was to pass a significant and bipartisan immigration reform bill. That immigration reform bill was comprehensive, including a $40 billion-plus investment in border security. We passed it in a bipartisan way in this body with nearly 70 votes. My naivety was this: Yes, there was a Republican House. When the bill went over there, having been a Governor and having watched how State legislatures worked, I assumed that the Republican House wouldn't just embrace our bill but that they would do their own version of an immigration bill, and then we would sit down in a conference and hash out some middle ground. No. I was wrong. The Republican majority House decided to bottle the bill up in committee. They never took it up and never did their own bill. That was in 2013--the education of a naive Senator. Years later, in 2018, during the Trump administration, when we had a Republican majority in this body, we dealt directly with President Trump. He wanted $25 billion in border security over 10 years. We basically came up with an offer that was, Can you take yes for an answer?…”