Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague and former firefighter from Pennsylvania makes an excellent point. There are 32,000 fire departments in this Nation. Do my colleagues not think we ought to have at least one of them in every State that has got the capability to respond to a nuclear or biological or chemical attack? I have no clear conscience that we have even one in the State of Mississippi. Again, it is sort of the difference between the Pennsylvanias of the world and the Mississippis of the world. Over half the cities in Mississippi are 10,000 people or less. They are by design low-tax and, therefore, low-service. There is an incredible turnover, I am sorry to say, because they do not pay as well as they should. So we do need a core competency in every State. No one is going to say that this makes the world safer from a chem biological attack. I can tell my colleagues right now, if a crop duster were to fly over a football field at Old Miss or Mississippi State and release a substance, I really do not think there is anyone in the State of Mississippi right now who can run the test to determine whether or not it was just diesel fuel, whether it was water, or whether it was a chemical or biological agent.”