Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the bill we just passed out of the Senate, a bill to aid the victims of Superstorm Sandy, is important. It is important when we are faced with a disaster--whether it is a hurricane, whether it is an earthquake, whether it is a drought, whether it is a flood--that we step forward and find those ways that we can help citizens who have faced immeasurable loss. The effort that has gone back and forth between two bodies now, and will, hopefully, move forward, is one which will certainly help to address the needs of those families who lost so much in Superstorm Sandy. I think we all recognize this was not the only disaster this country faced last year. In my State of Alaska we faced a fish disaster. For those of you who are from States that do not rely on your fisheries as a source of income, a source of jobs or a source of daily sustenance, you might think: Fish disasters; well, that is not really much to talk about. That is not a true disaster. In my State, when fisheries have declined to the extent we have seen--the loss of the Chinook salmon on the Yukon River, the Kuskokwim River, the Upper Cook Inlet--this has a dramatic impact on our State's economy, a dramatic impact on the livelihoods of so many Alaskans. Whether they be commercial fishermen, sport fishermen, our subsistence- based fisheries, our fisheries communities, those businesses that are dependent on our salmon fisheries, these were all impacted this past year.…”