Political Quotes

“I want to join my colleagues from Maryland and my friend, the Senator from Virginia, as well, to speak out on this manufactured crisis. This President is holding 800,000 Federal workers hostage, folks who are going to work, some of them without pay, and others who are furloughed. As has been mentioned, this is not just affecting Federal workers. Senator Kaine and I have been talked to by a number of contractors, small business owners. A couple of them are closing their doors this week because they have now gone for weeks without being paid. You can't put a business back together after you have closed its doors. So there are 800,000 Federal employees, there are contractors, but there is a whole slew of other folks who are already immediately affected. The complete lack of thought this administration had in this shutdown--they tried to say: We are not going to make it seem like a shutdown. We are going to leave the parks open. Now we see destruction going on in our parks. We see in our State that Shenandoah National Park has trash overfilling. We have the battlefields where people have engaged in inappropriate activities. We have seen as well a whole slew of businesses that depend upon a high volume of tourist travel during the holidays--none of that took place. I also wonder whether Donald Trump, who says this is about security-- well, if it is about security, we ought to make sure our Coast Guard is paid. We ought to make sure our TSA agents are paid.…”