Barbara Boxer: “if I could say to both leaders, whom I respect tremendously--and I agree with Leader Reid 99.9 percent of the time--this…”

“if I could say to both leaders, whom I respect tremendously--and I agree with Leader Reid 99.9 percent of the time--this is the situation: We have a highway trust fund expiring, going bust, going broke, and, yes, we have to spend some time. You know, we have a lot of staff; we can divide this up--250 pages, 4 people. We have a summary. We have a summary of the bill out there for everybody, and we can just say we need 4 weeks or 6 weeks to look at it. The EPW piece, as my friend Senator Inhofe knows, has been out there for 3 months--not that long; at least 2 months. We haven't changed much in that. It has been out there, so that has been reviewed. All I want to say is this: If we could just keep our eye on the prize--and I understand that the way we proceed over here is important. That is why I voted no, not to go to a bill I wrote with Senator McConnell, because I agree with my leader completely. We need a chance to look at it. But I would submit that this isn't the first time we have ever done a highway bill. This is a little different from a health care bill in the sense that it is a highway bill. Most of it is very similar. I would say EPW builds off the old bill we had before, and most of the bills track older bills.…”