Political Quotes

“I rise in support of legislation to reauthorize the surface transportation bill, and, in particular, the Federal Public Transportation Act of 2012, which is the transit amendment before us today. While we are nearly 3 years beyond the September 2009 expiration date of SAFETEA, I am pleased we are finally moving one step closer to legislation that would allow infrastructure investments to move forward. Chairman Johnson and I worked together to produce bipartisan legislation that eliminates outdated, inefficient programs and promotes greater efficiency and effectiveness in public transportation systems all across America. The Federal Public Transportation Act passed the Banking Committee with unanimous support. This legislation before us reflected in the amendment currently under consideration maintains funding for public transportation programs at $10.5 billion a year. Unlike previous reauthorization bills, the committee was unable to provide an increase in the baseline funding amount for public transportation. We were, however, able to provide a substantial increase to existing programs by eliminating the bus discretionary program which previously contained earmarks totaling $984 million. In fact, we did not just eliminate one account that included earmarks, we eliminated all earmarks that were previously included in the reauthorization bill.…”