Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I see other colleagues on the floor waiting to speak so I will try to wrap up these remarks in about 5 minutes. But I do want to add a few things and thank my colleague again. He is on the committee that will take this bill into consideration. That committee is chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer. I want to thank her, our colleague from California, the Chair of the EPW Committee, and her staff, who have been working with us very closely over the last year as we fashioned this approach. I think the Senator, of course, will speak for herself, but I think it is in her philosophy that the polluters should pay, not the taxpayer, and that the area that was injured should be the area that receives the response. It is important that the environment that was injured should be first attended to first. That is the essence and nature of our bill. But to put a couple of other things in the Record, Senator Vitter mentioned this, but it is worth repeating. President Obama has already endorsed this general concept, and I want to thank him for his early leadership on this issue. I had some real reservations early on about the national oilspill commission. I honestly did not think there were enough people representing the industry perspective, only the environmental perspective. But I was happy to see that commission report came out fairly balanced.…”