Political Quotes

“I wish to speak very briefly on the Toomey amendment. I know we have on the floor a bill that basically, let's face it, puts off for about 4 years reforms we put into the Flood Insurance Program. It is a $24 billion program. It is a very small, in essence, entitlement program we have in this country. I am very despondent over the fact that we passed these reforms unanimously out of the Banking Committee in 2011. That took place in October of 2013. Our Nation is facing incredible entitlement problems, and we all know it. People on both sides of the aisle have been down here ad nauseam talking about the fact that as a Nation, the No. 1 threat we have is our inability to deal with the fiscal issues we know we have throughout the entitlement programs we have in this country. Here we have a situation where, unanimously, out of the Banking Committee, we passed reforms to deal with the flood insurance program which we know is moving quickly towards insolvency. So what do we do? Maybe instead of being the most deliberative body in the world, we might be described as the most pandering body in the world. What we are doing instead is punting on these reforms. I am discouraged by that. It is amazing. I think we have not shown the ability to really address any of the bigger issues that our Nation has to deal with. Obviously, I would be more responsive to a bill that maybe made tweaks or did some things to make this work in a way that was not quite as draconian.…”