Political Quotes

“I am pleased that we will be passing legislation today to authorize vital funding for our state and local public health systems. Recognizing the difficulties facing our state and local governments and health facilities following the unprecedented attacks on our country, it's clear that we must greatly expand the resources of our health systems. Mr. Speaker, immediately following the first Anthrax attacks, I met with public health officials from my State, and with representatives of community health provider systems. What I learned from this discussion is that our local and state health infrastructure and information systems is woefully unprepared to deal with the level of biomedical, chemical and radiological threats for which we clearly now must be prepared. I am very concerned about the speed of which funds have been distributed to our state and local governments in order to update their health systems to deal with future attacks. Today with passage of the Bioterrorism bill we will be making a commitment to our states, local governments and health facilities.”