Eleanor Holmes Norton: “I thank the ranking member for yielding. I thank the chairman for coming forward with this bill. Enough of the outrage…”

“I thank the ranking member for yielding. I thank the chairman for coming forward with this bill. Enough of the outrage on both sides--if I may remind us all that that's precisely what the American people told us during recess they didn't want to hear. I do want to correct one error that the prior gentleman just made: That there were no jobs in the American Recovery Act. There were 3 million jobs created or saved by the American Recovery Act; and if there had been more funds in that Act, we wouldn't be here today with the American Jobs Act trying to get more money to avoid a double-dip recession. This bill is not what the American people deserve, and I apologize to them that we have had to lower our standards, but it does save us from another jobs catastrophe like the one we experienced in July. It saves a million transportation jobs. Imagine furloughing that many people if this bill, the Surface Transportation bill, were to run out on the 31st of this month. Both FAA and transportation authorizations are very short term, but both are clean. Both are about yesterday's business--about yesterday's airports because there is not enough money to bring us into the 21st century, and they're about yesterday's surface transportation infrastructure. Yet it's hard to think of bills that would be on this floor during this time that would be carrying such a burden to get so much done at one time.…”