Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in 3\1/2\ days, the Department of Homeland Security may well shut down. I speak as the senior Democrat on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for the last 2 years and, along with Dr. Tom Coburn, our former colleague from Oklahoma, chaired that committee that he and I led. But in 3\1/2\ days, if Congress fails to act responsibly--78 hours, I think, from right now--the Department of Homeland Security may shut down. I have spoken on the floor a number of times in recent weeks about the complex, consistent, and very real threats that our country faces. We are familiar with a lot of them--maybe not all. But over the past several months we have seen horrific images of beheadings, of mass murders, brutal executions at the hands of the Islamic State. Some of our Nation's largest companies and Federal agencies have been victims of massive cyber attacks. They continue to this day. This weekend another terrorist group, the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Somalia called al-Shabaab, vowed they would seek revenge against the United States. They cited the Mall of America in Minnesota as a potential target. It is not just these groups or the lone wolf terrorists they inspire that we need to worry about. Last fall, Ebola ravaged several nations in western Africa and even came to our shores as well. Threats from Mother Nature persist too.…”