Political Quotes

“If I could respond to my friend, I have a friend who-- when you ask him ``How are you doing?'' he says ``Compared to what?'' And when we talk about the legislation initially introduced by Senator Lautenberg, Senator Vitter, and now coauthored by you, Senator Vitter, and Senator Inhofe, with input from a number of us, I always say: Well, compared to what? The idea here is to ensure that the EPA does its due diligence on toxic substances in this country. And there are thousands or tens of thousands of chemicals--you know better than I do--that exist in our environment--in our air, our ground, in water--tens of thousands. Are they all toxic? No. But my recollection--correct me if I am wrong in this, but I think that out of those thousands, tens of thousands, I believe the EPA in the last 38 years has actually done their due diligence on really fewer than 200, maybe even fewer than 10 when you get down to it, maybe even just 5. And you say: How long has this bill been around, this law been around? Thirty-eight years. And they have now finished work on five highly toxic substances? If we can't do better than that, we ought to quit, and this is not the time to quit. It is sort of like football. You take the kickoff, and you are in your own territory and you start marching down the field. You get into the other team's territory, get down to the 20-yard line, and you are in the red zone--not in the end zone, but you are in the red zone.…”