Political Quotes

“I very much thank Senator Blunt. Thank you for helping to contribute to the bipartisan, positive tone of our deliberations. I thank my friend, the Senator from Rhode Island, for his leadership both in today's colloquy and in pulling together the language and partners, and Senator Mikulski, who started off our conversation today by reminding us as Senator Blunt has that it was a terrible storm in this area that knocked out power for a couple of days that gave a bracing reminder to the community around Washington, DC, just how much we rely in this modern economy of ours, on continuous, uninterrupted power. That storm was an act of God. That storm was a random meteorological event. But as all of us have spoken--Senator Blumenthal also commented on this--we know as Members of the Senate that there are daily efforts at attacks on the United States far more devastating, far more far- reaching than that transitory storm. For us not to act, for us to fail to act in a bipartisan, thoughtful, and responsible way would be the worst sort of dereliction of duty. All of us have been in secure briefings with folks from four-star and three-letter agencies with the most central roles in our intelligence community, in our national security agencies. But this is not something that only those of us in the Congress know or only those in the higher reaches of executive branch leadership know. This is now broadly, publicly well known.…”