Mr. President, I want to follow on to the comments made by the majority leader about the importance of the bill we are trying desperately to move forward here today and we tried to move forward yesterday. We had a good vote when we came back here on Monday night. Eighty-five of us said, Let's go do this highway bill. This is a key and important matter for the country. In the 1950s, it was President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican President, who said, We need an interstate highway system. We cannot move people, we cannot move commerce, we cannot be a great power. We have a great military, but we don't have a good road system. He moved forward not only with that but with the very first aid to schools at that time; because before he made the point that we needed to have a Federal program to help our schools, it was strictly a State matter. So we owe President Eisenhower a lot. And I will tell you, the way we are acting around here, if he were watching, he would be shocked. The first amendment to a highway bill is birth control. The second amendment the Republicans want after birth control is to talk about Egypt. It goes on and on, controversial drilling off our coast, and all of this list they came up with. It is very clear we have a bipartisan bill. It will make sure that we build our roads, we fix our roads, we fix our freeways, we make sure our bridges are safe. Right now, we have a horrible situation with tens of thousands of bridges that are unsafe.…
On the recordFebruary 15, 2012
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