Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thank Senator Menendez and return the compliment. We have worked through a lot of issues to find a bill that meets a valid, public purpose that can pass on a bipartisan basis in both Chambers. I thank Senator Menendez for working with me on that. The title of this bill is the ``SMART Act,'' but in retrospect, I wish we had renamed it ``the Thin Blue Line Act'' because this is about helping cities and States preserve essential services such as police, fire, and education for the reopening of our economy. Let's just kind of review. The Federal Government asked that State and local governments shut down their economy in order to control the coronavirus, and just like those small businesses closed at the behest of the government authority, so did State and local governments close, if you will, at the behest of the Federal authority. But what that did is it devastated the tax basis. Moody's, which Senator Menendez already alluded to, the independent agency that looks at the finances of cities and States, has said that if your State is dependent upon income tax, upon sales tax, upon tourism, and upon proceeds from energy, you have been hammered. Your tax base has fallen dramatically, and with the dramatic fall of that tax base comes a dramatic fall in the ability to support the thin blue line--the educators, the firefighters, the you name it, the essential services that are essential to the reopening of our economy when we come out the backside of this epidemic.…”