John Mica

Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It seems to taper off, again, as the Presidents fade into history.

Is there any estimate you could give to us as to what additional funds are provided or what percentage of additional programs are underwritten by the private sector?

Do we have a schedule for updating some of those exhibits?

I was really a bit surprised to see the condition--sort of an aged condition of the Kennedy exhibit.

I thank again Senator Boxer for helping assemble the witnesses.

It is rail programs and we have $35 billion in the fund.

I cannot again thank Senator Boxer enough for her hospitality in hosting us today and her leadership in the U.S. Senate on our first public effort here together.

She has been absolutely delightful to work with and most cooperative in this new enterprise of the House and Senate working in an unprecedented fashion.

I have already had the pleasure of working with your U.S. Senator who chairs the counterpart committee in the U.S. Senate.

The number is 62,000, of which we have 3,770 administrative personnel in Washington, DC, and another over 9,000 administrative personnel in non-screening positions across the country.

We must stop sitting on our assets.

Well, I'll try to be brief since everybody's about frozen.

This goes on and on, a waste of taxpayer dollars.

When you end up with responsibility over an important committee like ours, you try to set some priorities.

If we rely on an infrastructure advisory commission--everything is advisory--it's never going to happen.

I think the President was right last night. We've got to cut the deficit, but we've also got to keep investing.

You shouldn't shy away from this because it's difficult. You shouldn't shy away because of cost.

We could have had it. We wouldn't even have this conference. We'd have high speed rail.

It's all about beating down the worker to the new wage level, which is 12 bucks.

What can we do? We are taking two to three times as long on all types of transportation projects because of the environmental rules and regulations.

If I have to, I will subpoena people in and we will reveal what took place.

That is certainly a laudable goal. But we all know that the money isn't there for that yet.

I was encouraged the other night when the President affirmed his commitment in his State of the Union speech.

President Obama and Congress have taken the first good first step by allocating $10 billion for high speed rail.