Political Quotes

“I am not only aware of it, I attended many of those hearings, as I believe the Senator from Nevada did as well. And Senator Byrd took it very seriously. He brought in the experts when it came to law enforcement, fire protection, and medical personnel, and asked them what they needed. It was not this porkbarrel that we are often accused of here and of dreaming up ideas on how to spend money. He asked the people on the ground: What do you need? What will help? When they identified those needs, he put that into legislation, which was rejected by this administration. So we have a situation, if you would step back for a second, where we have an economy on the ropes. We have a President with a failed economic policy. We have a war on terrorism, which continues to pursue Osama bin Laden, with very little success. We have a homeland security program headed up by a man we both respect, Tom Ridge, which, unfortunately, is not sending the resources necessary to State and local governments so they can protect America. Instead, we are preparing to launch an invasion of Iraq. We are putting the billions of dollars necessary into that effort and, unfortunately, shortchanging homeland security in the process. That, to me, shows misguided priorities. The President cannot get away with blaming Congress for this. It really is a creation of his own administration and their own priorities in spending.”