Political Quotes

“I am pleased to join with my colleague and friend Senator Cantwell to discuss a new GAO report on the cost of climate change. As our Nation begins to recover and rebuild from the devastation of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Nate, as well as from the wildfires that are sweeping across the West, we cannot ignore the impact of climate change on our public health, our environment, and our economy. Most of the past focus of the impact of climate change has been on public health and the environment--important to be sure--but there has not been nearly enough analysis of the consequences for our economy and for the Federal budget, in particular. In 2007, I first became interested in the cost of climate change when Senator Joe Lieberman and I headed the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. We commissioned a report by the GAO to look at the fiscal risk of climate change for both the Flood Insurance Program and the Federal Crop Insurance Program. Our request was an attempt to sound the alarm that there were very significant fiscal consequences to the Federal Government for failing to take action. The report found that the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Homeland Security can and should do better jobs of assessing the fiscal impacts that unchecked global warming will have on the taxpayer-funded Federal Crop Insurance Corporation and the National Flood Insurance Program.…”