Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from California for his enormous leadership, and I thank the sponsors of this legislation for their hard work. It is always baffling to me, as I have spoken on the floor of the House and served in this Congress, how colleagues can look a crisis in the face and run head-on as a locomotive, smashing the solution, speaking ill about those who need and are suffering, and that is what we are hearing today. I am very glad to rise in support of the Mental Health Matters Act, H.R. 7780, and I hope some of my friends on the other side of the aisle will recognize that we are the problem-solvers. We are not the bomb- throwers. We are not supposed to be looking at every solution, and because it comes from somebody of a different party, we want to fight them for it. I know what happened during the pandemic. I was out in the community doing testing and vaccinations. I talked to parents about online learning, those who didn't have access to broadband, and I knew what it did to the children. Why? Because children view schools and their daily activities as their work. Adults go to work; children go to school. It builds their confidence, their sense of esteem, their friendships, lifelong friendships. That was all undone because of the pandemic. Do you know what else we did? We saved lives. If we had continued in- school learning, we would have lost thousands of children and their families.…”