Political Quotes

“There are just some days you have nothing but luck around here. Might I just thank the managers for having agreed to the amendment. I am sure Senator Specter would want to be associated with this. I make the point for the record that in our present legislation, the Secretary of Transportation is directed to choose one maglev project to proceed. Senator Specter and I feel that there is no reason we should not have more than one, if that makes sense. If there are alternative engineering techniques that should be tested, the Secretary agrees more than one is the way to proceed in an experimental mode. I note, sir, that magnetic levitation was invented on the Bronx- Whitestone Bridge in February of 1960. A nuclear engineer by the name of Powell, working at Brookhaven, was on his way back to MIT from a visit, and between the time the car slowed down in that 'permanent' traffic jam and the time he paid his toll, he thought up maglev. The Germans are now in the process of building a route from Hamburg to Berlin, which will be open in 2005 and make the trip in 55, 58 minutes. The Japanese have much the same technology. We have nothing. In ISTEA I we authorized $1 billion for this newest mode of transportation since the airplane. It is an extraordinary phenomenon. It travels easily at 270 miles an hour, will go to 350--no friction, no exhaust. We invented it; the Germans and the Japanese are building it.”