Lateefah Simon: “My guess is that in the State of Tennessee people were not complaining. I talked to one of our colleagues from a western…”

“My guess is that in the State of Tennessee people were not complaining. I talked to one of our colleagues from a western State, and they were not complaining. One of the advantages, Mr. President, of not running for reelection is, a year ago, just about this time, my wife and I took off for Spain and Portugal, flew to Madrid--at our expense, I hasten to add, not at the taxpayers' expense. And we rented a car and drove around Spain and Portugal. The highways were better than our interstate highways. But I paid $4.50 a gallon. People talk about being overtaxed in the United States. In some areas, our taxes are excessive. But we have, next to Saudi Arabia, the lowest gasoline tax of any country in the world. If you were to ask, ``What can we do to improve the environment?'' one of the things we could do, frankly, is not to lower the gasoline tax, but to increase it. We ought to be increasing it to spend money to build our highways and use it on mass transit and that sort of thing. So I think any move to lower that tax is shortsighted. And then the distinguished Congressman from Texas has suggested that we take the money from education. I cannot imagine anything more shortsighted. We need to invest more in education, not less. That just absolutely does not make sense. I hope we will reject this thing that emerged in this political season, the season that is frequently called the ``silly season'' by observers, and rightfully so.”