Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator from New York, who has been a strong clarion voice on this issue. He has helped to crystalize what this is about. He is exactly right. I want to read into the Record, as the Senator from Illinois comes to speak, from several articles around the country that have editorialized exactly on the position that he ended on, and it is the point of this whole debate--whether we accept the Cantor doctrine, which requires an offset before we send help to people who are stranded or flooded out or in an ice storm or in the middle of a tornado or whether we have to have Washington cut the budget first. The central Pennsylvania newspaper said it well. They said: It is easy to generalize and say our government spends too much money and needs to cut all government programs. Then a tornado wipes out Joplin, MO, or a hurricane called Irene slams into the East Coast destroying countless homes and lives in Vermont or a flood devastates communities in Derry Township, Middletown and Harrisburg, PA. It is then we count on our local, state and federal governments for help and, in particular, for the federal government to support us with disaster relief. We have certainly seen this year through wind, fire and rain--the ice could be next to come--that FEMA's financial efforts cannot be tied to some sort of Congressional pay-by-the-disaster system.…”