Political Quotes

“We are debating legislation that is critical to the safety of all Americans. One threat that often gets underplayed but which has been catapulted into the news recently is natural disaster. Seventy-five percent of Americans live in areas that are at risk for some type of disaster--whether flood, fire, hurricane, tornado, landslide, or earthquake. In the past 2 years, the United States experienced 25 severe, extreme weather events that caused over 1,100 fatalities, $188 billion in damages--far more than all of the domestic acts of terror in the last decade. This legislation spends $6.2 billion on disaster relief, $5.6 billion of which is emergency spending not subject to discretionary caps. I strongly support the role of the Federal Government in disaster response, recovery, and prevention; but the costs of disaster relief are staggering, and they are growing--whether due to stronger and more frequent storms, climate change, increased development in harm's way, or an increase in disaster declarations. To put these costs into perspective, Congress started in 2013 by passing the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which generated $600 billion over 10 years in new revenue. Two weeks later, we passed the Superstorm Sandy supplemental, totaling $60 billion--in total, all of that first year's revenue under that proposal.…”