Political Quotes

“last week, late in the week, Senator Byrd and I held a press conference. The reason we held this press conference was to indicate that we believe we need to do something to restore confidence in the economy. We also believe that part of restoring confidence in the economy is making sure that homeland defense is something that is more than just words. We are proposing things that cost money. It is great to talk about homeland defense, but if there is no money attached to it, it becomes a shallow promise to the American people. Some of the things that Senator Byrd and I have talked about have to do with bio-terrorism. We believe there should be some prevention. Madam President, if you are going to have good, high-quality medical care, you have to have preventive medical care. The way to reduce costs and have a healthier public is to put our resources in the front end, not wait until everybody is sick and in the hospital. Bio-terrorism is no different. We need to have prevention and response. We need to have food safety initiatives. We have so few food inspections now. I believe I heard my friend from Iowa say, in a debate in this Senate Chamber last week, that about 1 percent of the food in our country is inspected. We need to do better. We need to make sure that State and local governments, who have responsibilities in this area, have some capacity to do that. We believe there should be upgrades to State and local health departments.”