Political Quotes

“Let me just end with this: I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle can vote for this CRA. I talk about jobs, I talk about national security, and I talk about working families, all of which are very important. At the end of the day, this is so important because this actually, in my State, is a matter of life and death. What do I mean? Now, I have trotted out this chart a lot. I am going to explain it here. But this is why I get so riled up about these issues and why, when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and Democratic administrations always come up to Alaska, saying 'Hey, we are just going to shut you down; we are going to crush your jobs,' why I get so animated about it. It is jobs. It is national security. When you are producing energy from America, from Alaska, you are strengthening the country, strengthening good jobs--good union jobs, by the way--but the other thing you are doing is you are helping people live longer. What do I mean? I break this chart out a lot because it is really important to me. This is from the American Medical Association from 1980 to 2014 on Americans' life expectancy--who was living longer and who, unfortunately, was living less longer. If you look here, this is America. The light blue, the darker blue, purple--those are the States that are living the longest. The yellow, orange, and red--that is actually people losing life expectancy. That is not good at all.…”