Political Quotes

“Thank you very much, Madam President. I know we have a number of colleagues who still want to speak, and we want to get to votes tonight, so I want to be very brief speaking in opposition to the Lee amendment and in support of the amendment of my friends Senator Carper, Senator Boxer, and Senator Corker. Madam President, I want to quickly tell you about the Norwalk River Bridge, which is a bridge in the State of Connecticut, which is pretty important to the transit of people and goods throughout the Northeast because it spans the Norwalk River and allows for trains--Amtrak trains, Metro-North trains--to be able to transit millions of people over millions of trips up and down the Northeast Corridor. Without the Norwalk River Bridge, you cannot get from New Haven to New York, but you also cannot get from Washington, DC, to Boston. That bridge is 118 years old, and it is a miracle that it opens at all. It needs to open in order to allow maritime traffic to go up and down the Norwalk River. It is a miracle that it opens at all. But, in fact, on 16 of its 271 openings last year, it did not open and it interrupted Metro-North service 175 times. The result for not just Connecticut but the entire region is hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost productivity. Our inability to pass a long-term transportation bill means that big projects like the replacement of the Norwalk River Bridge cannot get done. Why?…”