Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. This amendment would decimate the funding for our FEMA Homeland Security grants. By that I mean the State and local grants on which our communities depend. I mean the transit and rail grants that we've heard so much about in this evening's debate; I mean the port security grants; I mean the UASI grants--the urban area grants that are risk based and targeted to the areas in this country that are under the greatest risk; and other programs of smaller size. These programs have helped keep our communities safe. After all, our first responders are not at the Federal level. Our first responders are at home. And our States and our communities are on the frontlines of responding and preparing to respond, mitigating, and then dealing with disasters-- disasters of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and other major emergencies. This amendment would return to the 2012 funding levels, which were greatly reduced from previous-year funding levels. In fact, the levels in 2012 were at an all-time low and were widely decried by our States and localities. So this year we've begun in this bill to build those funding levels where they need to be, and this amendment would wipe all that out in a single stroke. The author of this amendment has made a great deal of the pace of the spending on these grant programs. I have to say that the figures cited tonight are misleading in the sense that these are multiyear programs.…”