Political Quotes

“I first want to give a thank-you to everybody who is working right now and all the folks who are required to be here with the Senate in session. I wish we were focused on those things right now that are directly related to making sure everybody is going to be able to continue to be safe and to focus on what we need to do to safely reopen the economy rather than what we are voting on this week. I want to thank all of you for being here. I also want to send condolences and thoughts to everyone who has lost a loved one in this crisis. We are approaching, this weekend, 100,000 Americans. If that doesn't give us a sense of urgency right now to effectively address this health pandemic and to get this right and to work together, I don't know what does. I rise today with a real sense of urgency. I think it is important to understand how we got here so we know what we need to do going forward. On January 20, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the United States, the same day as the first case in South Korea. Our White House didn't act. They were, unfortunately, more worried about the stock market than people in the supermarket. In South Korea, they did act. Within 8 weeks, they were testing 40 times more people per 1 million of their citizens than we were. By April 14, they had 10,000 cases, and we had over 600,000 cases because there was no sense of urgency to do what needed to be done to take this seriously. Now we know that we are well beyond that.…”