Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to speak on the bill. We are going to have a vote somewhere around midday tomorrow on this bill. This Senator comes to this issue with a long history of drilling for oil off our coast. Ever since I was a young Congressman, I have been fighting to keep oil rigs off Florida's coast. It is especially important at this time, as we have a new administration coming in that took a public position in the election declaring the intent of the President-elect to open up additional areas off the coast to oil drilling. The package that we are going to consider tomorrow is an enhancement of exactly that goal. I want to point out to the Senate why this is not in the interest of our country now. First of all, we are dealing with a law that we passed about 5 or 6 years ago with an acronym of GOMESA, which opened up for the first time oil revenues that came from Federal waters to be shared with the Gulf States. We were doing this primarily in the interests of Louisiana because Louisiana had been hit so hard by Hurricane Katrina, and there was a need to restore a lot of those marshes. This was another way of getting revenue to the State of Louisiana. At the same time that bill was passed, it enhanced a law that we had passed with my former colleague Senator Mel Martinez back in the 2006 timeframe that kept the oil drilling off Florida in the gulf--and kept it off, and it is in law.…”