Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee for yielding. And I thank her for her great work being involved in the appropriations process, which I shared with her for many years, but a place where so many of our values are reflected by how we allocate our resources. I particularly want to thank Congresswoman Nita Lowey, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro for their relentless, persistent, constant advocacy for this Flint money. As you know, Mr. Speaker, it was February when President Obama sent over a request for $1.9 billion to address the Zika crisis. This was an amount of money based on expert advice and was related to scientific evidence. It related to how we would do research for a vaccine, how we would do vector control, how we would do prevention, and, as our colleagues have mentioned, how we address the issue that this is a very unusual situation because it is sexually transmitted, and we had the obstacle of saying no contraception, which held us up for awhile. So today, finally, we come to the floor, and I think it is very important that we take the action that we do. But I do want to remind you that $1.1 billion is still $800 million short of the $1.9 billion the President requested. Some of that other money was taken from the Ebola resources, which were sorely needed, and continue to be needed there. So while this is an important, giant step, it is not complete in terms of what we need to do.…”