Political Quotes

“I would like to use those 2 minutes, if I could, to sum up. I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his support throughout this whole process. He has been instrumental in helping us work through this to find what we believe is a reasonable way to move forward and provide that immediate emergency help that is so badly needed up in the Northeast. Let me just give one example of how we came to these numbers. We do provide, through the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations, $32 million for repairs of Amtrak's infrastructure, dewatering of tunnels, electrical systems, overhead wires. These are immediate needs, and we want to provide funding for them. There is funding for highway emergency relief directly related to Sandy. We fund for that. We fund for public transportation infrastructure, immediate needs between now and March. Again, we are not saying there might not be need for more funding after this, but we will at least have had the opportunity to vet that and look to ensure that the money is correctly spent. What we didn't do under that appropriations was $30 million of damages that come under the FAA existing budget, the funding for highway projects not related to Sandy that are in the Democratic bill and mitigation projects unrelated to Sandy. Again, we are not against mitigation, but we are saying let us focus on Sandy. Let us get the emergency help to those who need it now.…”