Political Quotes

“Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise today to object to the quick passage of H.R. 4470, which seeks to extend the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program. How could anybody be against that? I am actually for it. We should have terrorism standards. But--you know what--we always had these before 9/11. How did it work before the government got involved? Well, companies had to insure things. If you had a $100-million electric plant and it was at risk for sabotage or a fire or a disruption to the community, you had insurance, and insurance required that you have a fence. I mean, these things happen. It is not as if safety for our utilities and public chemical plants didn't exist before 9/11. So there are ways that the marketplace would take care of this. This measure, though, which would reauthorize this regulatory program for another 2 years, I think is being rushed through the Senate without due consideration or, really, any consideration at all. The Homeland Security Committee has jurisdiction over the program, yet we have not had any hearings to discuss this program or its effectiveness. This is part of the problem of government is we tend to reauthorize things without ever examining whether they work, what works, what doesn't work. Some programs might need more money; some programs might need less money. And we might ask ourselves: Do we have any money? We are $31 trillion, $32 trillion in debt. We borrow about $1 trillion every year.…”