Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, let's not lose focus here. We are talking about our country's security. We heard what would happen if the homeland function were to be eliminated immediately over a shutdown even with the emergency provisions that are existing. I want to address an important issue, and that is the issue of our security being jeopardized because of these stopgap budgets. Now, what does that mean? That means we continue to work within the constraints of last year's priorities, that we can't move beyond the funding that is there for those functions that we said were important for our security last year. The trouble with that is the terrorist threats are changing every single day. The landscape is changing under our feet, yet we are in a straightjacket in dealing with it. We cannot continue going forward. It has already jeopardized our ability to look at nuclear detection in this country because of these stopgap budgets. My State suffered a terrible tragedy with the Boston Marathon bombing, but I think all of us agree and all of us saw the way they organized, the way they coordinated all the functions--the State, the local, and the Federal Government, the medical functions, the emergency service. We all concluded--rightfully so--that countless lives were saved because of that. Do you know why? Because there was training and preparation for what could come.…”