Political Quotes

“I come to the floor this morning to talk about a GAO report, or a Government Accountability Office report, that is being released today, which says that the cost and impact to the Federal Government of climate change is in the billions of dollars. In fact, it is in the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 5 years, and, over the next decade-plus, it is in the trillions of dollars. Why is this so astounding? It is astounding because we have not had the Government Accountability Office outline for us before what the impacts of climate costs the U.S. taxpayers, what it costs the Federal Government, and that we are paying an astronomical cost. Right now we are discussing the supplemental, and we can see the costs of the damage we have experienced from storms, damage from wildfires, and damages from other kinds of events and how much it costs the Federal Government. The GAO took the last 2 years to develop this report after receiving a letter from me and Senator Collins of Maine to say that we wanted to understand these costs. Why did we do this? The Senator from Maine and I have long been advocates of looking at issues of adaptation and mitigation. We can debate all we want about what people think the impacts are of climate and what drives it. What we are here today to say is that we know that it is costing billions of dollars, and, as stewards of the taxpayers' money, we ought to do a better job at adaptation and mitigation.…”