Political Quotes

“Well, you just talked about history here. Actually, your Governor, DeWitt Clinton, really did lead a major infrastructure project. Now, California was the Gold Rush. It's very interesting to go back through the old writings; and the folks from the East, New York and around, traveled up the Erie Canal to the Great Lakes to Chicago and then from there on. And they also left--and these are my relatives--the port of New York, which was built as part of the infrastructure, to travel to the Panama and then across the Isthmus of Panama and then up the coast of California. So my own relatives took advantage of those two infrastructure projects that you talked about. However, your Governor was building off some of the work of the Founding Fathers. There's a lot of talk around here that there's no role for government in the economy. Well, George Washington disagreed. And his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, disagreed. And they had a debate with Jefferson, who thought that we ought to be an agrarian State; and George Washington and Hamilton thought there was a role for industrial and for manufacturing. And so George Washington in his very first days as President told Alexander Hamilton to put together an industrial policy for America. And there were about, I think, nine points or maybe 12 points in that industrial policy. One of them was: build the infrastructure. It specifically said canals and harbors. So this goes back to the very beginning of our country.…”