Billy Tauzin Quotations

The question is what I wanted to do with the new life God has given me. This is the mission I want to take on.

The immediate, highest priority need, in my humble opinion, is that we build quickly the interim structures that can channel water away from population and businesses in the New Orleans area.

Invite the best and brightest to compete for a grand prize to come up with designs, including new zoning, building codes and so forth, for New Orleans that could make it safe from water, and let the state and city pick the plan that works best for Louisiana.

And if citizens of New Orleans who are really contemplating coming back heard that we're really intent upon making the place secure again - regardless of whether the levees held or not - then I think a rebuilding process would really take shape.

I think we lost a great deal of sympathy and support with the way in which the crisis was handled, most importantly I think when we appeared to be grasping for too much at one time instead of identifying our priorities in a much more responsible fashion.

New Orleans has to learn to live with water rather than in fear of water, and we need a master plan that shows us how to do this. It's so critical that we send a signal to everyone in the country that we're serious about rebuilding New Orleans.

Venice, Italy, survives 365 days out of every year in water; New Orleans can survive a few days of water if it has to.

The timing was terrible, and having one disaster after another didn't help. I think the pictures on television of the way in which the disaster was handled also helped to turn off the public and Congress.

You probably have to have redundant levee systems with canals in between them, like the Dutch have, to make sure that incoming water is channeled off to areas where you deal with it rather than have it drown you.

Some 70 percent of Americans donated to Katrina victims.

I think the industry finally gets it. They've lost the connection with the American public, and they've got to rebuild the trust with the American public.

I was treated with a miracle drug, just like Lance Armstrong,

We are proud of what the Partnership for Prescription Assistance has accomplished in this short period of time. But our job isn't done. Research shows there are thousands more people in Virginia and across the country who could benefit if they simply knew patient assistance programs were available. We are committed to reaching every one of them.

Half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment.

We tried that in America. Jimmy Carter gave us price controls on natural gas. Remember what it gave us? Shortages, shutdowns, a horrible situation in parts of the country where factories couldn't operate and people went unemployed. Price caps? Prices caps mean shortages, less energy.

One of the motivations to not recall the tires, but to have Ford assume responsibility, was Firestone's concern that it would trigger action by DOT (the Department of Transportation) here in America,

I got the sense that this bill has a real chance of passing the Senate,

If it's a medicine that makes a difference in whether you're going to get cancer or not, you probably ought to get it out a little quicker.

He was totally incredible, ... This is the guy who was in charge of the corporation. ... I'm afraid he may have put himself in some legal jeopardy as a result.

It is absolutely critical that America's public health emergency system be prepared to respond to new and emerging terrorist threats.

I would not be surprised if some criminal indictments come out of this,

Using this VNS information, all of the networks, cable and broadcasting, effectively gave America the impression that the George W. Bush states were too close to call while the Al Gore states were falling in line for Al Gore,

The fact that we had to subpoena his phone records tells you he's not cooperating.

We know that many patients struggle to afford their prescription medicines and are unaware that help is available. That is why the pharmaceutical research industry is leading an aggressive campaign to inform doctors and prepare them to educate patients about the Partnership for Prescription Assistance. This new effort demonstrates our commitment to locate, inform and mobilize as many doctors as possible.

We have found that Enron's financial statements violated numerous existing accounting rules,

The Partnership for Prescription Assistance is changing thousands of lives everyday. No one's helped by a medicine that sits on a shelf and is out of reach financially.

What's at issue here is that a special fund was established for these families. It was specially funded for this event, September 11,

When you make something as important as the medicines that keep us alive, you've got to do everything in your power to make sure those medicines reach the people who need them, especially when the people can't afford to have those prescriptions filled. The companies are committed to taking care of everyone who calls in and signs up.

What we are interested in is: What went wrong with this recall? Why didn't it happen sooner?

The public surely must be confused today, ... It's the job of NHTSA to come up with reasonable standards of when tires pose a risk to the consumers. NHTSA needs to ride to the rescue here and clear up this confusion very quickly.

As soon as one or more of these major corporate figures is indicted and convicted for the thievery that occurred at the expense of the American investor, I think confidence will gradually come back.

The results of these tests, coupled with Ford's analysis of the problem of tire aging, will allow federal regulators to make informed decisions about the safety of the replacement tires in question,

The tone of the ad has to be much more educational, not promotional.

The work being done by America's pharmaceutical research companies is the greatest hope of finding additional treatments and a vaccine for avian flu, and policy measures should be developed to encourage these efforts, not discourage them,

After reviewing the documents produced to the Committee on Energy and Commerce in connection with our investigation into the accounting practices at WorldCom Inc., we must express our grave concerns about what we have discovered,

Do you think anybody ought to wait three years before telling people? I want my daughter to know about that right away. If it's a medicine for the sniffles.

Anyone who looks at that objectively would agree you had a horrible flawed process in place. If those numbers are accurate, why would Firestone not report that to headquarters? ... How could you possibly have not known in 1996 that you had an obligation to recall those tires...how could you assume that a one-out-of-10 failure rate was not significant enough to issue a recall?

As members of Congress, we believe it is our obligation to forward specific and credible information in our possession that could suggest a federal crime has been committed,

This is not ice cream. These are powerful products.

This activity served to deceive the public about Enron's financial condition,

For a lot of people trying to decide whether to come back to New Orleans, the central question of whether the place is secure needs to get answered.

They literally got employees of Enron to join in with them,

In all too many cases, the government is responsible for the digital divide that's being talked about here at Comdex,

If the networks and the VNS system made a mistake, the first good thing to do is to say we made a mistake and many of you did, ... And the second good thing you can do is to find out how you can fix it so it doesn't happen again.

If you're watching an ad on TV showing a drug that could save your life and you can't afford it, you have a right to be resentful. People are angry about not having access to medicine.

By falsely calling Florida, you became an agent in the process instead of a reporter of the process,

I don't think the messenger is what potentially presents a 'good' or 'misleading' message. It's the message. That's what you've got to focus on. Frankly, I think patients delivering the message are the best ones. They tell real stories. They can talk from some experience.

The goal of the Partnership for Prescription Assistance is to reach as many people in need as possible. Part of that effort includes educating America's Hispanic community about the hundreds of public and private patient assistance programs available to them and helping to match them with a program that best meets their needs.