June 26, 2008

Washington, DC—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following remarks today at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Annual Conference’s National Leadership Luncheon.

Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:

“It’s a pleasure for me to be here today. I want to talk about the founder of this organization, a man who I knew very well. When I came to Washington as a member of the House of Representatives in 1982, Congressman Ed Roybal took care of me. 

“By the time I got to Washington, he had already been there ten terms. He was a senior member of the House of Representatives. He was so good to me. He was he was a friend.

“My wife unfortunately got very, very ill and spent more than a month at UCLA hospital, so I went back and forth a lot. When I would arrive at L.A. International Airport, Ed Roybal would be waiting to take me to the hospital so I could visit my wife.  

“Ed Roybal was a wonderful human being. He was the first Latino elected councilman of the city of Los Angeles, in the 20^th Century. He ran in 1947 for the City Council and was defeated, but he came right back and in 1949 was elected.

“I wish I could explain to everyone what a genuine and good person he was. If this organization has only 10% of the merit and goodness of its founder, you’ve got it all.

“So all of you should be happy about the person that formed this organization, and of course we all know that his wonderful daughter Lucille is now serving for him in the Congress of the United States, filling in for him. She’s a star in her own right and I’m happy that I have the knowledge of Congressman Roybal as someone who helped me.

“The number of Latinos in elected office is at an all-time high. I have said in Nevada for years that the Hispanic community is going to have an impact by registering to vote, and now we are finding they are registering to vote.

“We have had a sea-change taking place this year, principally because of Hispanics. The day of our caucus we had more than 30,000 new Democrats register in an hour. We now for the first time in a generation in Nevada have tens of thousands of new Democrats and Republicans in this state, and this is something that people only dreamed of and I only dreamed of in the past. This is an opportunity that is going to shape the country because it is taking place all over. We still have so much more work to do.

“For the past 8 years we have been doing very little. I expressed on the Senate floor today, when I was a kid we used to go out and gather wood and washes as we called them. In those washes, mesquite grows and it dies and you pull it out and it burns very well and we would usually take a pick-up in my little town of Searchlight, where there were no four-wheel drives. Invariably we got stuck and you know you can see the wheels back there spinning. Well that’s what we’ve been doing for 8 years in Washington. Those tires have just been spinning and going a million miles an hour but going nowhere and that’s basically what we’ve been doing.

“There has been an effort certainly during the last two years that we’ve had the majority in the Senate and the House to maintain the status quo. The Republicans have done everything they can to maintain the status quo. The American Dream, once a reward within reach for a lifetime of work, has become unaffordable, and that’s too bad. It’s unaffordable for families, who work hard and play by the rules, and so Latino elected officials and Latino voters have the power to turn the page. And that’s why your ‘Ve y Vota,’ or go out and vote program, is so important in such a critical time in our nation’s history.

“Let’s talk about a few political issues. The first is Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of our country. It’s hard to comprehend, but it has been more than 5 years since mission accomplished was established by our President. We still have 150,000 young Americans still fighting in Iraq. As we have heard already, there are a disproportionate number of these troops who are Latinos. 140,000 Latinos serve in our military today and there are 1.3 million Latino veterans.

“I had the honor to represent Senator Daschle in Puerto Rico before the unveiling of a statue, and I was stunned to learn that Puerto Rico has had a larger percentage of their young men and women serve our nation and lost their lives than any other part of our country. But Puerto Rico is only an example of the sacrifices that have been made by Latinos in the military. I would hope that we all recognize the valor of our troops in Iraq and how important it is that we bring them home as soon as possible.

“Not only have these brave men and women lost their lives, but we have 35,000 who have been wounded and a third of them grievously wounded; blind and paralyzed. We have more than 3,000 who are double amputees and thousands of others who are amputees. We’re going to have people coming home, that are coming home now, and within the next 24 hours here in Washington we are going to pass something extremely important. It shows what can be done with a big idea when people work together. We’re going to pass a new G.I. Bill of Rights.

“Let’s just take a minute on the economy. The Bush-Cheney economic policies have left America sputtering in a deeper recession. Today, 8,500 Americans will face foreclosure, tomorrow 8,500, Monday 8,500. Thank goodness the courthouses are closed on weekends or it would be 8,500 on Saturday and we’re strained to struggle with the housing bill that’s being held up by the Republicans. It’s something we need to do. The economy is in difficult shape. From the time when this Administration took office when gas was $1.46 a gallon, to now, when the average is $4.10 a gallon, there’s been some real hits that the American people have taken. And who has taken most of the hits? Middle class America.

“I will take a minute to discuss energy policy. Don’t be distracted from what the Republicans are doing today. They’re talking about drilling our way out of the problems we have. Of all the oil in the world, including ANWR, what they think might be there, we in American have less than 3% of it. We use 21 million barrels of oil every day and import 65 % of the oil we use. We can’t drill our way out of the problem. Should we do more for production? Of course we should. But, we have to look to a different energy economy, that is renewable energy, and we have been stymied and stopped every step of the way by this Administration. We’ve got to move so that the sun and the wind and geothermal takes care of most of the energy we need.

“On immigration we struggle hard because we are doing the right thing. We need comprehensive immigration reform. Of course we need to do something about our borders, both northern and southern. We need to do something about a guest worker program, in Nevada as much as anywhere. It’s not only in the agricultural community were its needed. We have to do something to bring people out of the shadows. We have ten to twelve million people here who have papers that aren’t in good shape. We have to do something about that. We have to put these people on a pathway to legalization; a pathway to citizenship.

“We have to understand that this is not a gift. We’re giving people the opportunity to pay fines, penalties, to learn English, stay out of trouble, pay their taxes, and then they move to the back of the line. No special privileges. And when we bring them out of the shadows it will be good for them, their families, and for our economy. And finally we have to do something to make sure that the employer sanctions laws are something meaningful, not a catch twenty-two. We have to continue to work on comprehensive immigration reform.

“In the past few years, we’ve spent an unprecedented number of hours in the Senate dealing with immigration. We have spent more time on immigration than any other issue we’ve dealt with and I have no regret having done that. It hasn’t been easy. The truth is it would have been easier to leave the issue for some other day, some other time, but that would have been the wrong choice.

“We tried in good faith to get it done, but conservative Republicans blocked us from doing anything. Remember we only got 12 votes for immigration reform from the 41 members of the Republican Party in the Senate. Unfortunately, despite President Bush and Senator McCain’s proclamations of support, neither one showed the leadership or expended the political capital necessary to actually get it done.

“Senator McCain has gone so far as to announce in the Republican debates that he would vote against his own bill. His new position on immigration is so divisive and wrongheaded that it has won him the endorsement of Tom Tancredo.

“They even blocked our Dream Act which would have helped children of immigrants being denied citizenship to receive an education and a good job. I’ll tell you why I thought that was so important too. I was in Smith Valley, Nevada; a little agricultural community on Lyon County. I spoke to the assembly and I could tell that there was a young lady in high school that wanted to talk to me. I went over and talked to her and she said in words that I’ll never forget, ‘I’m the smartest kid in my class, but I can’t go to college, my parents came here illegally. What am I going to do Senator?’ I didn’t have an answer for her, and I don’t know what has ever happened to that beautiful young woman. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I know that we are going to continue to work so that in the future when somebody asks me, I can say, ‘We passed the Dream Act and you can go to college.’

“Thank you very much for inviting me today. I look forward to working with you in the future. This is a great organization. Thank you very much.”        

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