Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thought I could give Senators and those who may be following this very elongated debate on the highway bill an update as to where we are. We have a managers' package we are hoping to approve momentarily. It is a bipartisan package. We continue to work across the aisle. Under the consent, we want to move forward with that. We had, I believe, a holdup yesterday. We are working to find out why. But we are very hopeful that will move forward. Then we have a series of votes on amendments, beginning at about noon. So at 11:30 or so, we will be back on the bill. I want to say to my friends on the other side of the aisle and to my friends on this side of the aisle that we are making great progress. This is a jobs bill. This is a major jobs bill. This is the biggest jobs bill. They passed an IPO bill over there in the House. Eric Cantor is saying it is a jobs bill. I do not know how many jobs it will create. It is an investor bill. It is good; I am for it. But it does not come anywhere close to the bill we are working on today. Because on March 31, if we do not act on this transportation bill, everything will come to a screeching halt, if I might use that analogy. Because there will not be a gas tax anymore going into the Federal highway trust fund, there will not be any funds going from the Federal Government to the various planning organizations in all of our States and communities.…”