Jim Sensenbrenner: “If one looks back at the history of the consideration of civil rights bills in the Congress, the Civil Rights Act of…”

“If one looks back at the history of the consideration of civil rights bills in the Congress, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act 1 year later, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, these were all passed due to bipartisan support on the floor of the House and the Senate and bipartisan cooperation with whichever administration was in office at the time, the Eisenhower administration, the Kennedy administration, or the Johnson administration. This resolution is in the spirit of bipartisanship because there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, historically, as well as today, in their commitment to equal rights for all Americans. The Constitution is color-blind. We should not discriminate based upon race, creed, color, national origin, gender or disability, and those are the types of protections that this Congress, through bipartisan effort, was able to enact into law, but more importantly to get the American public, even those who held out almost to the bitter end, to support today. And that is why America is so much different than countries in the rest of the world, because we faced up to our discriminatory history, and we were able to overcome that first legally, but the hearts of America followed the law in this case. Yes, there is more work to do. Nobody argues that point.”