Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, 13 years ago, Osama bin Laden orchestrated the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, killing almost 3,000 people immediately and wounding thousands more. The attacks also created an environmental nightmare. Hundreds of tons of contaminants poured onto the streets and canyons of Manhattan and Brooklyn and other areas, northern New Jersey, covering responders and survivors in toxic dust. In the days following the attack, the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States Government, contrary to ample evidence, insisted that the air in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn was safe to breathe. Thousands of responders remained on the site for search, rescue, and cleanup efforts; and thousands of survivors returned to their homes, but the air was not safe to breathe. The EPA was not telling the truth. Now, I don't get angry at the government for the first few days, maybe even a week or two, encouraging people to help with the rescue operation when we still thought it might be a rescue operation, but after that 2 weeks, when people were working at the site for weeks and months without proper respiratory protection because the Federal Government was telling them that no protection was necessary because the air was safe to breathe, that was no longer a rescue operation. It was a cleanup operation.…”