Political Quotes

“Mr. President, Senator Leahy is somewhere around here. But since he is not on the floor, I will go ahead and present this amendment. This is a Leahy-Inhofe amendment. It is on two almost unrelated things, but the Leahy portion of the amendment extends the public safety officer program benefits from 6 to 10 families whose loved ones died in voluntary services. It is fully offset for 10 years. The important part of this amendment is mine, and that is--if I could have your attention over here, and I am speaking to the Republicans now, we have been trying to do this for a number of years, and Senator Leahy and I have agreed to this. Those of us who have been pilots--and I have been for 55 years--I have been involved in a lot of humanitarian missions. What this does is offer liability protection to those of us who volunteer ourselves, our money, and our aircraft to do missions no one else will do. They are humanitarian missions. The longest one I did was all the way down to Dominica, North of Caracas, Venezuela, through two hurricanes, and we saved a lot of lives down there. This would offer liability protection to those individuals who make those sacrifices. There are 8,000 of us, by the way, around the country, I am sure from every State represented here. So I would encourage my colleagues to support the amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from Oklahoma.”