Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, as co-chair of the House Great Lakes Task Force, I rise today to speak on behalf of our Great Lakes region. My part of it is the Ninth District of Ohio that stretches all the way from Bryan, Ohio, all the way across the northern part of Ohio through Toledo, all the way to Sandusky and down to Fremont, Ohio, passing through places like Rossford, Perrysburg, Defiance, Ohio, and so many other beautiful places. Our hardworking families depend on the Great Lakes not just for their livelihoods but for our way of life. They are the largest freshwater body on the face of the Earth, and we take the responsibility for tending that seriously. The Great Lakes form the beating heart of our regional economy. They support hundreds of thousands of jobs, from the auto and steel industries, manufacturing to shipping, farming to fishing, and tourism to technology. Our freshwater coast is a national treasure, and it is also a global economic engine, the third largest economy in the world that we share with Canada. We work on this together. We have from the beginning. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative--or some people call it the GLRI--has been a bipartisan lifeline and a vital investment that has brought over $3.7 billion to our complex ecosystem to restore our wetlands, to clean up toxic waste in hotspots, and to protect our fresh drinking water. It is complex with lots of industry, lots of agriculture, lots of people, and lots of freshwater. We must fully fund the GLRI.…”