Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, today, this body will, for what I hope is the final time, meet its moral obligation to provide for survivors and responders suffering from 9/11-related illnesses. This obligation is two-fold. First, on September 11, 2001, it was not just the city of New York and the Pentagon that were attacked, it was the entire country. A national attack has always required a national response. That is why responders from around the country rushed to New York to aid in the rescue and recovery effort in the immediate aftermath. Today, sick responders and survivors live in all 50 States. This is a national problem, and Congress must provide a national solution. Second, tens of thousands of responders and survivors are sick because the Federal Government, in its rush to get Wall Street reopened, ignored the evidence and the expert opinions of scientists. The then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency repeatedly assured us that the air around the World Trade Center was ``safe to breath.'' We knew it wasn't, but the Federal Government kept insisting it was. And, compounding the Federal Government's culpability was its failure to conduct a comprehensive cleanup of the environmental disaster created when the World Trade Center towers collapsed. For example, the EPA administrator told the public that asbestos could be cleaned from apartments with a damp cloth and a wet mop.…”