Political Quotes

“I want to thank my colleague from West Virginia for his leadership on this issue, going back not just days and weeks but months and even years. I think we should start with the word ``promise'' tonight. We have a matter that came before the Senate that Senator Brown indicated was the subject of a bipartisan consensus that went all the way through the Finance Committee, a vote of 18 to 8 earlier this year. The question before the Senate today and the question before the Senate in 2017 will continue to be: Will the Senate--and I would add will the House of Representatives--keep our promise to these coal miners and their families? It is really not more complicated than that. We have to ask ourselves whether we are going to fulfill our promise. Just to give you a sense of what this means to individuals, I have three letters in my hand. We have all gotten hundreds of them, if not more, maybe thousands at this point. But I have three letters from three different counties from which I will read excerpts. The first one is from Johnstown, Cambria County, with a great history of coal mining but also a great history of a diverse economy. This individual wrote--actually two; it is a husband and wife writing to me--saying: ``We are in our late 70s and desperately need our pension and hospitalization.'' Cambria County, PA, alone has 2,483 pensioners. Just that one county has that many pensioners who happen to be families who had a loved one working in the coal mines.…”