Political Quotes

“I agree this is not the moment for debate on that. Let me respond very briefly. The bill was $1.2 billion and $900 million was for the tunnels, period. I don't know where the additional billions of dollars come from. OK, $1.2 billion. Subtract $900 million. You are then talking about $300 million. Of that, the money went to a lot of things that relate to dogs, sniffers, and a whole range of additional Amtrak police. We can argue about rail signal systems and other things, which I think are essential. Let us get the numbers straight. We are talking about $1.2 billion. Usually what we do when we have billions like this is we disagree. We at least bring them up and debate them on the floor. We can't even get the bill brought up and debated on the floor. If my friend from Arizona--and he is my friend--is correct about billions of dollars of subsidization to Amtrak, then I am sure he will prevail when we talk about a security bill. But I respectfully suggest that is not the case. No. 2, this really is for another day. I will just take 2 minutes. We talk about, for example, the Wisconsin line. We do airports. We pay $150 million a year. I think we added another $100 million--don't hold me to that--to go into something like 350 cities where nobody wants to fly, nobody wants to go. We pay the airlines. We subsidize them to go into Bemidji, MN. I don't know where they go--places that no one wants to fly into or out of. We subsidize them with 150 million bucks.…”