Political Quotes

“I would like to thank both the ranking member for yielding and for his support, and the chairman for his support, for two amendments that I have in this bloc. One is a commonsense amendment exempting a narrow class of welders from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations that I offered with Mr. Davis of Illinois and a number of other Members. The other amendment is a bipartisan compromise that I offered with Mr. Dold and Mr. Nadler. It is an effort to clarify that transit agencies can utilize CMAQ and TIFIA funds to match the 50 percent funding in a New Start grant. I appreciate the chairman's willingness to work with me on this issue and restore the Core Capacity and Small Starts projects Federal match limit back to 80 percent and allow local agencies to flex other Federal funds to these projects. Without these funds, without these changes, local flexibility would be greatly diminished and many projects would be delayed or canceled, including Chicago's red and purple line modernization. This bill still restricts the use of the STP funds for the remainder of the match and codifies the New Starts grant amount at 50 percent. I strongly disagree with these new restrictions and hope we can also work on this in conference.”