Barbara Boxer: “If I might respond to my friend through the Chair, he speaks for me on a lot of these infrastructure issues. It does…”

“If I might respond to my friend through the Chair, he speaks for me on a lot of these infrastructure issues. It does shock a lot of people because they know that the most conservative, the most progressive--how could they ever get along? What I tell people is that we respect each other's points of view. When we can't agree, we don't get personal about it; we accept each other's opinion. Where we can work together, we find the sweet spot, and we have done it several times. In terms of water infrastructure, I want to say that the people in this country have a right to have clean water. They have to have ports that work and the dredging is kept up with. They have to have ecosystem restoration where our marshlands are--we are losing them, and they are flood controlled. And many, many Corps of Engineers reports that have been done--we don't want them to sit around because, as my dear friend knows, if we don't pass WRDA, there is no authority for the Corps to move forward. We have these projects all over. So this bill is about saving lives from floods, saving lives from lead in water. It is about major economic benefits to our Nation. I would say, with my friend's support and my support back to him, we created this WIFIA program that we based on the TIFIA program-- transportation infrastructure financing. Now we have water infrastructure financing.…”