Political Quotes

“I appreciate the comments of my friend from Texas. I only heard part of them, but I appreciate his interest and what we need to do to deal with this coronavirus. I hear so often in this body that it is about the economic issues, which to be sure it is, as you know in Utah and Senator Cornyn knows. But when I hear the President's response on what to do--first, I know that people are angry in Ohio and I think elsewhere that the President has waited so long to act. I know people are angry when they find out that the President made major cuts to the Centers for Disease Control, which the Presiding Officer knows is the best public health agency probably in the history of the world, combined with our public health departments at NIH and the FDA and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati--all of this incredible public health infrastructure safety net we have built in this country bipartisanly through decades and decades and decades. I know people are unhappy when they learn about the President eliminating the position at the White House of the admiral physician who ran our effort to always be trying to anticipate a public health outbreak, a pandemic of sorts. I don't know whether or not we are in one. I don't think we know that. I am not an alarmist or panicky in any way, but I know people realize we had such a late start on this because of the President's actions over the last 3 years. The issue is not to bail out more corporations.…”