Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thank Senator Capito for not letting this body and this country forget about this terrible addiction crisis that has afflicted her State, my State, and particularly our region of the country, but well beyond that, her work has been particularly important, and I thank her for doing that. I think it also points to the importance of our doing, during this pandemic, other things to support local governments that are so stretched with Medicaid dollars and with local public health dollars. That is the importance of the next round of pandemic funding--State and local governments, local communities, and local education. We know that Senator McConnell's effort--and I put the word ``effort'' in quotation marks--has fallen so short. He waited and waited and waited and waited and waited. The House passed its bill in May. This body, through Senator McConnell, would not even take it up until--would not even begin negotiations, really, until this week, when unemployment is about to expire and when the eviction moratorium is about to expire. If the opioid crisis, public health crisis, is bad now and we haven't dealt with the coronavirus, well, now imagine what will happen when people lose their unemployment or when it is reduced to $200 a week, causing mass eviction. Moratoria are expiring, and eviction courts are opening up all over the country.…”