Quotes from Jackie Speier

When we foster an economy without hope, we guarantee that a segment of our population will be destined to know homelessness on a permanent basis, and not for the one night I voluntarily spent at a shelter.

In my district, California 14, we have about 4,000 families who are on food stamps, but some of my colleagues have thousands and thousands more. Yet, they somehow feel like crusaders, like heroes, when they vote to cut food stamps.

My family wasn't particularly political. Mom and Dad voted, but that was the extent of their involvement. In fact, I ended up going to U.C. Davis because, to them, Berkeley was too radical.

When I recently spent a night at a homeless shelter, I was dismayed that members of the middle class had moved in and that earning above the minimum wage did not protect adults from having to share a room with dozens of others.

We must start to prepare for a warming world in the same way that we prepare for the possibility of terrorism - by making sure our infrastructure is secure and by working to minimize threats as much as possible.

Planned Parenthood has a right to operate. Planned Parenthood has a right to provide family planning services. Planned parenthood has a right to perform abortions.

There is no longer any anonymity on the Web - unless we mandate it. The most personal information about your online habits is collected, bought and sold, often instantaneously and invisibly. Data collection is a business driven by profits at consumers' expense.

People have a right to surf the Web without Big Brother watching their every move and announcing it to the world. The Internet marketplace has matured - and it's time for consumers' protections to keep pace.

It is important for us to be able to meet and greet the people that we serve. And if we start having police presence everywhere we go, it's going to create a chilling effect on discourse, and it creates an incredible assault on the democratic process.

Privacy isn't negotiable. It's the right of every American.

My life experiences have helped me to be less fearful. In politics, that has allowed me to take on issues sooner rather than later.

It is past time that consumers recognize the emerging power of 'Made In America' products and services. The nation's shopping list needs this header: Check out what is made here before you 'go' overseas.

We need affordable childcare and paid sick leave so workers don't have to choose between their health and their livelihood.

Since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the gap between men and women's earnings has narrowed by less than a half-cent per year. At this rate, American women will have to wait until 2062 to bring home the same salary as their male counterparts.

Every day is Earth Day, and I vote we start investing in a secure climate future right now.

We must start to treat climate change as what it is - a threat to United States security. And we must not delay.

When a government for the people becomes a government in spite of the people, then who are we really serving?

Working 40 hours a week used to mean a minimum standard of living and a foothold on the first rung of the economic ladder to the middle class.

We think nothing of protecting consumers from faulty toasters or unsafe cars. Is it unreasonable to suggest that investors are entitled to information they can trust before investing their hard-earned money? I don't think it's unreasonable at all.

As members of Congress, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the United States, not the Republican or Democratic party. I have been willing to stand up to my own leadership when it's in the national interest.

I don't know what these Republican congressmen drink that make them experts on women's reproductive health.

It's more important than ever for America to rededicate itself to manufacturing at home. When we make more products in America, more American families will make it.

We don't get to choose our formative moments. Very often, adversity and failure shape us more permanently than fortune and success.

That's just one of the reasons why it's so important to encourage people from a range of backgrounds and circumstances to join the ranks of our government officials. If we don't have diverse representation, simple needs will be overlooked, and our legislation will never be as far reaching as it needs to be.