Political Quotes

“my sincere thanks to the chairman of the committee, Senator Inhofe; to the ranking member, Senator Jeffords; and my colleague, the ranking member on the subcommittee, Senator Baucus. This is a job well done under the constraints we face. We have worked long and hard to get to this point, and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of proceeding. The bill, S. 732, the Safe Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act, is long overdue, 2 years past due. Our roads are deteriorating and safety is deteriorating unless and until we can get this bill up. My thanks to the leader for allowing us to call up the bill. It has a lot of moving parts. Every time you move one part, you make somebody slightly happy and several more very unhappy. But I believe it is a good step forward in attempting to meet our goal of completion prior to expiration of the current extension of the authorization on May 31. If we do not proceed to move to this debate, Senators should be aware we may not be able to pass a seventh extension, and our States may cease to let additional contracts, and thousands of jobs may be at stake. We called up S. 1072 a little over a year ago, and final passage of that bill last year was 76 to 21. Today's bill, S. 732, is nearly identical to last year's bill, with one major problem: To comply with the President's budget request of $284 billion, we have taken a proportional cut across the board of approximately 10.7 percent.…”