Political Quotes

“Mr. President, right now we are debating the Great American Outdoors Act, which would be great if only it were balanced. My problem with the Great American Outdoors Act is that it spends billions on places where we vacation, but the authors of the bill would not allow a few million to be spent to protect the places where we live and we work and we help create livelihoods for many. There is an amendment that would do that that is bipartisan and that would not take any money away from the billions that the bill is already allocating for those places where we vacation. First, let me kind of make my point. Forty-two percent of Americans live in a county or parish adjacent to a coastline--42 percent. Eighty- five percent of Americans live in a coastal State. But of the billions that go into the Great American Outdoors Act, of those billions, 50 to close to 60 percent are spent in seven States, seven localities, and if you exclude Washington, DC, and areas around Washington, it is not spent on coastal areas. We are spending billions on places where we go to vacation, but the authors of the bill will not allow millions to be spent to protect where we live. That is foolish public policy. We should be investing in coastal resiliency. Now, of course, the irony is, we are going to spend billions on the coast. Why? We have seen it.…”