Political Quotes

“I thank the majority leader for locking us in, and I think we will complete our comments well on time for the vote. I am very pleased to be joined by my colleague Senator Collins as we introduce a bill called the Religious Workforce Protection Act. Our third cosponsor, Senator Risch, is chairing a Foreign Relations Committee hearing right now but wanted me to comment that he is also a cosponsor of the bill. This bill deals with a problem that I first saw in my parish, that, at the time, when I was talking to folks in my church about it, seemed like a small local problem, but it turns out it is a big national problem. My church, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, in Richmond, VA, was founded as an immigrant church. It was heavily for Italian- and German-American Catholics, right after World War I, who felt sort of looked askance upon because of the war, and they wanted to have their own parish that could be a haven for them. Now, a hundred-plus years later, my church is still an immigrant church, but it is about a third Congolese. But in addition to the fact that many of our churches of all denominations--synagogues and temples and gurdwaras and mosques--in the country serve new American populations, it is also the case that many of our religious workers in the United States are also immigrants.…”