Political Quotes

“in a few moments we will be closing for the week. But before doing so, I wanted to bring to the attention of my colleagues something that was just brought to my attention about 2 hours ago when I was e-mailed by our President pro tempore, Senator Ted Stevens. Basically, in a little cryptic language, it said: Bill, did you read the New York Times today? I said: No, I haven't read the New York Times today. Then he gave me one statistic that he picked up. I looked at it, and he is exactly right. That statistic drove home to me a threat--we don't talk very much about it--that we need to face up to and to act on. We are doing some powerful things in the Senate to do just that. But we are going to have to put it out front, and we are going to have to lead on it. The statistic is that China, in engineering, one field, is producing 442,000 new undergraduates a year, along with 48,000 graduates with master's degrees and 8,000 Ph.D.s in engineering. I focus on that to seize the opportunity that we do have before us a real threat that America is losing--not will lose but is losing--today the edge in technology that we depend on, and we depend on it in terms of creating the American dream, maintaining that American dream to pass on to our children, and it is time for us to act. This has not been the first time that certain challenges have been put before us. We faced a similar challenge, and we overcame it.…”