Political Quotes

“I rise today to speak about a bill that is long past due--long past due--and one that, in part, honors our dear colleague and my dear friend Frank Lautenberg. Anybody who served with Frank knew he served with compassion, and he had a passion with that compassion that was unbeatable. This is one of those pieces of legislation he had compassion for and the passion to get it done, and I think we can all agree the current Toxic Substances Control Act, which we know as TSCA, is inadequate and the law is long past due to be reformed. The Toxic Substances Control Act has not been improved in more than 30 years. I couldn't believe that when Frank explained to me the history of this piece of legislation. How this all came about and how I became involved is that in 2013 I started talking to Senator Vitter. He was working it diligently, and he told me that Frank had always been on the frontline and championed this thing. So I went to Frank to get his input, and he said: Joe, the time has come. We have to do something. We have to move the ball forward. It is not going to be a perfect bill. I understand that. And to be honest, I have never seen a perfect bill. So we worked on it, but Frank was willing to move it forward. Here are the facts. In the 30 years that we have been talking about doing nothing but talking about it, 80,000 chemicals have been registered in the United States--80,000 new chemicals have been registered--which many of us use every day.…”