Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I would like to engage my colleague, the Senator from Iowa, in a colloquy. I would first like to take this opportunity to commend Senator Harkin, Senators Inouye and Cochran and the rest of the Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee for crafting a responsible, commonsense and critical supplemental appropriations bill to allow New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and other impacted areas recover from the devastation left by Superstorm Sandy. I would like to highlight an important aspect of the recovery effort, and that is addressing the employment and workforce crisis following the storm that has exacerbated the already chronically high unemployment rates in many of the impacted areas in New York and beyond. The human, infrastructure, and economic devastation that Superstorm Sandy inflicted upon New York has been crippling and only comparable most recently to the tragedy of the September 11 terrorist attacks. While it will be months before the economic impact of Sandy can be fully assessed, particularly as it relates to the dislocation of workers, initial figures clearly indicate a long economic recovery for businesses and employees, particularly given that the most densely populated region of the United States was at the center of the storm. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that four of the five counties with the highest number of labor force participants per square mile were among those hardest hit by Sandy.…”