Political Quotes

“I have come to the floor this afternoon, unexpectedly. I had anticipated that I was going to be taking the long trek home, for even a short weekend, going back to Alaska. That is not the case this weekend, unfortunately. Our COVID numbers are at alltime highs, and most of the events and meetings that I would have had back home canceled. They are on Zoom. So life is just a little bit different. You roll with it. And it means that I am here in Washington, DC, on this Friday afternoon. But I opened up the paper this morning, the Anchorage Daily News, our largest statewide newspaper, to, again, headlines that have just kind of unfolded over these past weeks with more just grim and difficult news. The headline today is: ``Alaska infection rate remains high with over 1,200 new COVID cases.'' We are leading--we are leading the Nation right now in our COVID rates, and it is interesting. Alaska has--we are separated enough geographically, but through the advantages of air travel and road travel, we mix, we mingle, we get around, and the virus knows no bounds, as we all know. But as we are seeing, thankfully, the case counts beginning to decline here in the lower 48, Alaska is doing just the opposite. I am quoting here from our paper: On average, the U.S. saw a 26% decrease in cases over the last two weeks while Alaska recorded an 84% increase.…”