Political Quotes

“Mr. President, what is unfair in this country is the fact that we label bills to fix things and fix a lot of the symptoms, but we do not fix the underlying problem. We are going to spend several hundred million dollars when the bill ultimately goes through, and much of it will be well applied, but the underlying problem will never be fixed. The Senator mentioned we have 12 agencies--12 agencies across this government--responsible for food safety. What I would contend to my colleagues is that the same amount of money we spend now, if we spent it wisely, would give us a much safer food supply. All through the course of this debate, I have had staff at every meeting raising the consistent objections I have raised. At every meeting, one of my staffers has been there. They were ignored. I am not stopping this bill because it was ignored; I am stopping the bill because I do not think we are fixing the true underlying problem. Let me give you an example. Here is what Dr. Hamburg said. This is on the egg rule. We believe that had these rules been in place at an earlier time it would have very likely enabled us to identify the problems on this farm before this kind of outbreak occurred. How long did it take them to develop the rule? Ten years. It started with President Clinton asking that this be addressed. Robert Reich went and inspected and said it is unbelievable what has happened. And what happened is, he initiated it with the FDA, the start.…”