Political Quotes

“I will take just about a minute. I know we are waiting for others to come. I have heard some of the discussion on the floor and in the hallways about Thanksgiving. On Thursday, when I sat down with my family over Thanksgiving dinner, I thought about our history and how my grandparents came to Vermont from Italy, my great- grandparents from Ireland, and my wife's family from the Province of Quebec in Canada. We, similar to most Americans, are a family of immigrants. It is that rich melting-pot history that makes our country so special, so strong. Thanksgiving is a good time to celebrate and honor that strength. Far too many immigrant families today, however, live in fear--fear of being torn apart, of losing a mother or father or sister or brother, to deportation. Bringing peace to those families is one of the things that most motivated me last year during the long debate on immigration reform. Both Democrats and Republicans in this Chamber praised the fair and thorough process that we had in the Judiciary Committee on the immigration bill. We had 6 hearings featuring 42 witnesses. We debated bipartisan legislation a total of 37 hours over a 3-week period. We considered 212 amendments, and we adopted 136 of them--all but 3 on a bipartisan basis. The full Senate then debated the bill and approved it by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. But that effort was not good enough for Republican leaders in the House. They would not even allow a vote on the bill.…”