Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President. In the wake of 9/11, Congress took a fresh--I want us to walk back in time a little bit to how we actually got here today. In the wake of 9/11, Congress took a fresh look at some of our Nation's vulnerabilities and realized that our country's chemical facilities--part of our industry that our Presiding Officer knows a lot about--realized that our country's chemical facilities could be potential targets for terrorist attacks. So we created the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program, known as CFATS, to better protect high-risk chemical facilities from those looking to do us harm. My recollection is not perfect, but my recollection is that among the people who were the prime authors of that were, I believe, Senator Collins from Maine and possibly Senator Lieberman from Connecticut, the senior Democrat and senior Republican on the Homeland Security Committee at that time. The program that was created--I believe, and I hope I am not mistaken, with their guidance and leadership at that time, roughly 10 years ago--started out with some stumbles out of the gate, as some of you may recall. The Department of Homeland Security-- then a younger organization--lacked the trust of industry. The program also lacked a long-term authorization. There was a fair amount of concern about predictability, and we know how businesses like predictability and certainty, which is understandable.…”