Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from New York. We are here today to do a single job, and that should be to fund fully the Department of Homeland Security. Anything else is an abdication of our responsibility. Anything else is an act of legislative malpractice simply because of the inability of my friends on the other side of the aisle to satisfy the thirst of the extreme rightwing anti-immigration base of the party. So we are playing political games at a time when the safety and the security of the American people are being threatened. I know that all too well, Mr. Speaker, because earlier this week the FBI uncovered a plot in Brooklyn in the communities that I represent where individuals sought to impart bombs to the Coney Island neighborhood that I represent. And yet we are here playing games, government by crisis. This, of course, is nothing new: fiscal cliff, sequestration, 16-day government shutdown in October of 2013, a flirtation with defaulting on our debt, and now we want to shut down the Department of Homeland Security because my friends on the other side of the aisle can't get their act together. We need all hands on deck right now, Mr. Speaker. That means the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security working together.…”