Political Quotes

“as my colleagues know, I would not be in this body, I would not be in politics, were it not for the fire service. I grew up in a firehouse family, and I became president and chief of my fire company, went back and got a degree in fire protection and helped train the firefighters from 80 companies before I came here. It is tragic that we have to come to talk about the fire service when we have funerals. I have been to hundreds of firefighter funerals in this city, in New York, and around the country. Each year we lose over 100 firefighters. Many of them are volunteers. Because we have 1.2 million firefighters in the country out of 32,000 departments, each year 100 of them die. We come today to pay the respects for three more heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice, three ordinary people doing extraordinary things, who left behind children, who had dreams. In fact, John Downing was about to go on his vacation the day after he was killed in that tragic fire. Harry Ford and Brian Fahey were outstanding professionals in every sense of the word. We come today to honor them, and I want to give my highest respect to their families and to the work they have done. But that is not enough. We in this body must now recognize that these brave individuals need our support. We fund $300 billion a year for international defenders, our military, and I am in the forefront of that support.…”