Political Quotes

“Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much. It is always good to be on the floor with you. Thank you so very much for bringing to our attention once again the history of this Nation, how it was built, the great infrastructure. There is a report card out on how our infrastructure is today. This was put together by the engineers and others who do this kind of work. I am just going to read through this: aviation--these are our airports--D; bridges, C-plus; dams, D; drinking water, D; energy, D; hazardous waste, D; inland waterways, D; levees, D; ports, C--whoa, that is good; public parks and recreation, C-minus; rails, C-plus; roads, D; schools, D; solid waste, B--I guess we can get rid of our trash, that is good--transit, D; and wastewater, D. So, the entire infrastructure is D. Do you want to know why? Well, here is the reason why. Short-term we run out of money. Let's take a look here. In 2002, we spent $325 billion on nondefense structures, all of these things I just talked about, and that was 2002, at the beginning of the Bush Presidency. And then every year after that--we are now down to about $225 billion. So $100 billion of investment, annual investment, disappeared, and so now we are running all of these D scores. It is fortunate that we are not asking for--well, I guess we are asking for reelection. We are in trouble. Just by the way, I got a phone call from my wife, and she said: You know, about the pickup truck, John. I said: What about it?…”