Political Quotes

“Madam President, I know that we are all looking forward to trying to finish our legislative work this week. The majority leader has announced that next week the Senate will be in recess for the traditional Memorial Day recess. Let me just urge our colleagues that before we leave for the recess, we need to act on the challenges that COVID-19 is imposing on our State and local governments. To me, it would be irresponsible for us to leave and go into recess recognizing that our State and local governments are so much impacted by COVID-19. They are making decisions now. They have to put their budgets together. They have to adjust this year's budget and plan for next year's budget. What is in the balance? Well, it is our municipalities, it is law enforcement, it is police, it is fire, it is emergency rescue. For our counties, it is our schools and funding of our schools. It also deals with public health for our State. It is public health and so many other different issues that are dependent upon the State having the resources in order to respond to the needs of their citizens--our constituents--as well as to deal with the challenges of COVID-19. I will give you one example on that. This week, by teleconference with representatives of our higher education, University of Maryland-- they depend very much on the revenues they get from the State and the revenues they get from their students. Both are very much in jeopardy today.…”