Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to urge a vote against this en bloc. This en bloc contains 8 percent of the total amendments that Republicans were allowed to offer in this process. To me it is amazing that this bill prioritizes things like artwork in rail terminals. I heard the chairman say earlier that, look, in Russia, they have chandeliers hanging in their rail stations. So I am not sure that we necessarily need to emulate Russian infrastructure, particularly focusing our hard-earned taxpayer dollars on hanging chandeliers and other artwork that the chairman categorizes as art infrastructure. I don't consider art infrastructure. I don't think my constituents would either. Our infrastructure is crumbling. I live in a district that is connected to Tennessee via the I-40 bridge, a glaring example of where we need to be placing our infrastructure dollars. That bridge was shut down just about 6 weeks ago for structural deficiencies. Ironically, we have two bridges connecting Arkansas and Tennessee. They are in Memphis and West Memphis, Arkansas. One bridge which was built in 1969, we refer to it as the ``new bridge.'' That is how old it is. Thankfully, those structural defects were found in time. But the majority is proposing to waste some of the billions of dollars on infrastructure on art--and without any way to pay for it after sending $70 billion to transit agencies over the last year to support them through the pandemic.…”