Political Quotes

“I am here today to talk about the Zika virus, which we have been hearing a lot about in the news lately. It is a virus that first began to appear--well, obviously it has been around for a long time, but we began to see it in the news lately with regard to its implications in Brazil and Latin America. But it has now found its way here to the United States, and there has been a lot of discussion about it. As the Presiding Officer knows, the President has requested $1.9 billion to deal with it. There are a lot of different things we need to do to address it. There has been a little bit of a squabble in the Congress about whether we should be spending that much money on it. So one of the things I argued for--and it has happened--is that we should take some of the money that was set aside for Ebola when the Ebola crisis was going on--it was about $500 million of that that had been unspent. I argued that before we go to the $1.9 billion, there was $500 million immediately available. Let's assign that to be used. The President has agreed to do that. But there is still a shortfall on this issue. It does need to be addressed. I hope we can find a way to address it. Obviously my political differences with the policies of the White House are well known and established, but this is an issue where I believe and I hope they will be supportive of this request. To be abundantly clear, it is not just about throwing money at it.…”