Political Quotes

“Absolutely, I say to the Senator from Delaware. In Alaska, I chaired the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the MPO, which had this money that would come from this legislation. It would come to us, and if they delayed it here or they had these crazy continuations because for some reason they could not get their work done--and now we are seeing that on the House side. They have had months to work on this. I think they actually banked that we would not work together here, Democrats and Republicans, and get something done. We actually did, and a pretty significant piece of legislation about transportation infrastructure that is crumbling in this country got 74 votes, bipartisan, from all spectra of political persuasions. I think they banked that we would fail, but we didn't. There were five weeks of work and a lot of compromise because we know what the impacts are on the street if we don't do this. Back home, if the House doesn't take action on a very reasonable bill, a bipartisan bill, what will happen in Alaska is that some of these projects will de-obligate, or not obligate the funds, which means they will delay them. That means the contractors who expected to do work this summer will not. And in Alaska, because we are a winter climate--a lot of Northern States have a similar situation--the plant that provides the asphalt closes usually the first part of October. So you have a window that shrinks very rapidly.…”