Political Quotes

“I had an opportunity to visit, while I was in Connecticut with Chairman Larson, with a brave young soldier who lost his eyesight in Iraq. It was a situation where his ability to function required an animal to help guide him so that he could go about his normal functions of daily life. What the gentleman who made this amendment neglected to share with the House is that it has been the law that, under the ADA guidelines, you could have any animal--monkey, horse, so forth and so on--that could be of use to someone who was disabled. What the administration has done with this new regulation is limit this to only two types of animals: one are guide dogs--as we would normally know them--and the other are miniature horses that meet certain requirements, including being housebroken and so forth and so on. The reason why people who are disabled in some cases find this a more useful animal to use is that they live three times longer than a dog does and they have perfect vision. But I see that there has been some, I guess, laughter, as if this is comical. The fact of the matter is, when I met with this young soldier and his wife and their two kids, he talked about how it just made him feel whole that he could go get the newspaper from out in front of the house, that he could go to the store. So the idea that this is some new policy of the Obama administration is false, number one.…”