Political Quotes

“Mr. President, later today, the Senate will vote on whether it should proceed to a bill that attempts to link two critical yet independent debates: the day-to-day operations of one of the Nation's key national security agencies, and addressing our broken immigration system. Now, in doing that, it appears that leadership wants to hold hostage the operations of the Department of Homeland Security, an office charged with protecting our national security. And frankly, that is simply irresponsible. Sometimes the sense of history around here is whatever was the last sound bite heard on television, but let's take an honest look at the real history and how we got here: It has been well over a year and a half since a strong, bipartisan majority, Democrats and Republicans, came together in the Senate and approved a package of comprehensive immigration reforms. We did this after the Senate Judiciary Committee had held hundreds of hours of hearings and debate in markup. We passed it here overwhelmingly. The Republican House leadership refused to allow a vote on that measure even though most of it would have passed the House of Representatives. Now, because they wouldn't act at all, and left a void, the President acted. The President acted when he had waited for a couple of years to see if Congress would act--waited for the House of Representatives to take up the bill we passed. He had to act.…”