Political Quotes

“Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much. You keep bringing these issues so clearly to all of us. There are some among the 435 Members of this House who believe that the Federal Government should not have a role in these kinds of projects, and I think they are doing two things as they advocate that the Federal Government ought to get out of this business. First of all, they are ignoring the Constitution, which specifically says Congress is supposed to take care of postal roads. They are also ignoring the Founding Fathers. Washington asked his Treasury Secretary, Hamilton, to develop a program on advancing the American economy, and he came back with a program to build ports, postal roads, and canals. So this has been a long history of America from the beginning--that the Federal Government has a role in all of these. This morning, we had a hearing in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee about the highway bill, about the surface transportation bill. We note that the President put forward what I call the GROW AMERICA Act II--this is this year's version of last year's bill--that is for $478 billion, a 6-year program, $176 billion more than proposed last year, and fully paid for. I notice that the ranking member of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has joined us. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C., is with us now. This is her turf as ranking member of that committee.…”