Quotes from Dick Durbin

Town meetings are not bean bag. I've had hundreds of them, and sometimes folks get upset. And that's part of America, part of our process.

Let me tell you the first president to recognize the state of Israel was Harry Truman, a Democrat and every president since, Democrat and Republican, has stood closely with Israel.

I urge the Department of Education not to settle for half-measures when it comes to students.

We've had enough with the gun traffickers and straw purchasers who buy guns out of state and sell them out of the trunks of their cars in Chicago.

We can't do much about ensuring that the homeland is safe if our local police and sheriffs' departments don't have the personnel they need to keep our streets and neighborhoods secure.

When Senator McCain reaches across the aisle to find Democrats to support efforts to make America stronger, he finds plenty of us standing, willing to help him and many other Republican leaders.

If we can get back to where I can earmark money to bring it home to Illinois... to make us a stronger economy, I'm going to continue to do it.

If you're not comfortable with delay, frustration and impatience, get out of the Senate. It's the nature of the institution, but I think we've taken it to an art form.

It is unacceptable that disabled veterans in Illinois rank at the bottom of the list when it comes to disability pay. We owe our disabled veterans more than speeches, parades and monuments.

It is a challenge to all of us, and it's a challenge we need to meet, to make sure the Quincy Veterans' Home is, in fact, giving the best care and the safest care in the state.

Before I was elected to Congress, I worked in a courtroom. For years, I defended doctors and hospitals, and for years, I sued them on behalf of people who were victims of medical malpractice.

You know, the purpose of reconciliation is to avoid the filibuster. The filibuster is an effort to talk something to death.

We borrow 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend. We borrow most of it from countries like China. They have become major creditors of the United States and have more power over our economy than we want them to. So dealing with this is not only the right thing economically, it's certainly right from a moral viewpoint.

We don't give up on our values, but we better be sensitive, too, that there are people with more moderate views and people who may disagree with some parts of the Democratic platform as they are presented.

The swipe fee reform law that Congress enacted in 2010 was a huge step forward in bringing transparency, competition, and choice to a debit card system that had been rigged by Visa, MasterCard, and the banks.