Political Quotes

“I certainly join with my two colleagues and others in strong, passionate support of the RESTORE Act amendment. As has been mentioned, that will be an upcoming vote, the fifth vote in line once we start voting very shortly. This approach of dedicating any percent of the Clean Water Act fines just from the BP disaster to gulf coast restoration is widely supported on a bipartisan basis. The Obama administration strongly supports it, outside groups who have looked at the devastation in the gulf strongly support it all across the spectrum. This has been a concept that has been building for months, and there is strong and widespread support for this 80-percent dedication. That is reflected in the fact that the RESTORE amendment is a bipartisan push, a bipartisan bill, and now a bipartisan floor amendment. As Mary Landrieu and Senator Boxer mentioned, it had almost unanimous support coming out of the Environment and Public Works Committee. The cosponsors are fully bipartisan, so I urge all Members to join together in this effort. This is completely deficit neutral. We have an offset built into the bill such that this bill does not increase the deficit in any way, shape, or form. Let me point out, the money we are using, as has been said, would not exist but for the BP disaster. There are fines paid by BP and others, so that money did not exist before the disaster, and yet we still offset that full amount with an offset.…”