Barbara Boxer: “I want to start by thanking the Presiding Officer for her work on the Environment and Public Works Committee. We did…”

“I want to start by thanking the Presiding Officer for her work on the Environment and Public Works Committee. We did what some people think is the impossible: We passed a bill without one dissenting vote to move forward with a 6-year reauthorization of our highway and transit programs. People say: How did the committee do it? You are so split on other issues. It is because we recognize--all of us, whether we are liberal, progressive, moderate, conservative, very conservative--that it is essential for our great Nation to have an infrastructure that works. Last week, a bridge collapsed in California. It was a miracle no one was killed. That bridge carries people from California to Arizona. That means commerce goes over that bridge. That means passenger cars go over it. This is what happened. This is what it is about. It is not about what committees got in a room. It is not about Senator Cruz's ideological issues. It is not about any lobbyist. It is about the hard, cold fact that more than 60,000 of our bridges are structurally deficient. It is very hard to go to bed at night knowing we have not done anything about this except just do these short-term extensions of the highway trust fund where States are simply not undertaking the kinds of projects they need to undertake, which are inspecting those bridges and moving forward with repairing and strengthening them.…”