Political Quotes

“I am very hopeful that our Republican friends had a good meeting about this SAFETEA-LU technical corrections bill and that they decided to work with us to get this job done. This, as we say, is definitely not rocket science. It is a bill that is going to correct some mistakes we made in this enormous highway transportation bill that was passed several years ago. It is going to make very important corrections so the Department of Transportation can proceed to investigate the status of our highways, our bridges, and our transit systems. The bottom line is, as we get ready for our next highway bill--and, Mr. President, you are such a key player on our committee. You know this as well as I do. We see bridges collapsing. We need to know the extent of the problems we are facing. Because of a problem in the bill, the account that we need to fund these investigations and studies is oversubscribed, which is a fancy way of saying we need to figure out another way to complete our work. That is taken care of in this bill. We need colleagues to help us. We are not adding one dime to the spending on transportation systems and highways. All we are doing is making technical corrections to make sure some of the projects that have been stymied--let's say because the environmental report came in and said we can't do alternative 1, we have to do alternative 2, and alternative 2 was not authorized--will be allowed to move forward.”