Political Quotes

“You've used some very, very challenging words for us, reigniting the American Dream. We have an opportunity. It's this week. This House is going to take up in the Transportation Committee an extraordinarily important bill that speaks to the transportation infrastructure. The way that bill is currently structured, A, it's underfunded--it can only add to the deficit or not fulfill its mission and its purpose--and, B, has nowhere in it requirements that will cause jobs to be in America. For example, here's what we presently do. We presently use our tax dollars. We send them overseas to buy buses and rail cars and ferry boats and the like. When this bill leaves that committee, and certainly if it were to leave this floor, it must have a make-it-in-America provision so that our tax dollars are spent on American-made equipment, buses, trains, steel, bridges, whatever. Why in the world we would export our money and our jobs is beyond my understanding. But the bill as presently composed has no make-it-in-America provisions. It can be done. Those ideas have been presented. I'm going to take just one more second and put up one more of my favorite charts, which happens to be my legislation, H.R. 613. It simply says: ``If you're going to use American taxpayer money to do a high-speed rail or build a bridge or a bus, then it's going to be made in America.'' Mr. Altmire, you were talking about this earlier.…”