Political Quotes

“Early one morning, I went over and visited the ATF and met with Todd Jones, the administrator, and met a large number of his critical leaders there at the agency. They are doing an extraordinary job under difficult circumstances. The chairman points out that they have had success where they have been able to focus. I would be willing to work with the gentleman on his area of concern to try to get some focus. But to deal with his broader point, it is true that we need to be doing more to make the lives of Americans safer. We have 1,000 marines off the coast of Libya today because we are going to evacuate Americans. We have had eight or so hearings, and we have a new investigation, over the tragic attack that took place that took the lives of our Ambassador and three others in Libya. But we saw a shooting right here in America over the weekend in California, and you won't see a big clamor here for us to have hearings or to do a lot. And we do need to rebalance these issues. We need to be doing more. It is our responsibility to do more to protect the American people not just when they are abroad but here at home. The ATF and these other agencies play a critical role. This amendment, its offset is problematic. I would hope, as the chairman said, that we can work with you on this so that we can try to provide more resources to ATF and not necessarily take it away from this particular activity in terms of what we have to do in terms of a commercial crew.…”