Political Quotes

“I want to start with a personal thank- you to the Presiding Officer for indulging me for an additional few moments here so I may speak this afternoon on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. And while I intend to share with you my intention on how I will vote, I would like to start by expressing my disappointment with where we are in the Senate as a whole right now. There has been some good discussion here this morning as we are considering these unanimous consent agreements--statements being made but not action moving forward. I had hoped that if we were going to be at this moment in time, just over a week out from our national elections, that we would be here on the floor debating the merits of a COVID relief bill. In my home State of Alaska, as in so many States around the country, we are seeing unprecedented numbers now. The news, just yesterday, Friday, was that the United States reported the highest single-day recorded positive cases--83,757--really staggering. In Alaska, we have seen this virus spread to some of our small outlying villages, villages that are not accessible by road and villages that have limited medical facilities. We are really quite concerned about what this means for many of the Native people in these areas. We are not able to stay on top of the contact tracing like we were some months ago because of our increasing numbers.…”