Political Quotes

“There are so many things that we need to talk about. Important events are spilling upon Americans, just cascading upon us. We could spend hours and, indeed, should spend hours talking about North Korea. We should and will spend hours talking about tax reform, or tax reductions, or serious benefits for the superwealthy in America, and we will talk about that. We will debate that. But what is on my mind right now are the disasters that have befallen our American people. We think about what has happened over the last 11 months--floods on the East Coast, people forced out of their homes as the rivers rose in the Carolinas. We think about California, and the massive floods, and the 200,000 people who were evacuated from their homes in my district. We think about the recent hurricanes as they slammed into Houston, Florida, the Keys; and Hurricane Maria, as that hurricane devastated Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. These traumatic disasters are now in our memory, but they are also our reality. In California today, in my district, and in my colleague Mike Thompson's district, thousands of homes have been burned to the ground and people have died. These disasters are not new to America, and, over the years, we have set up a mechanism to deal with them. That mechanism is the firefighters across this Nation who respond, the emergency plans that have been put in place.…”