Political Quotes

“Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with my colleagues on the floor about jobs, job creation, opportunities that are there that are here now, and things we need to do. I report to my colleagues the report came out yesterday from the Brookings Institute, citing exports and export opportunities that we have. They were pointing out that the President rightfully, in the State of the Union Message, called for a doubling of exports by the United States in the next 5 years. They were looking around, studying where is this possible for it to be able to happen. What are the possible communities to see this happen? The Brookings Institute came out with a report yesterday that it released, and cited four metropolitan areas that doubled the real value of their exports between 2003 and 2008. One of them is Wichita, KS, and the aviation cluster--doubling its exports based primarily on aviation and the aviation industry. I congratulate Wichita and my State for what it has done to expand exports in essentially--a good portion of this being essentially a home-grown industry, general aviation. These are smaller aircraft, business aircraft, that travel to many of the airports throughout this country, and now airports throughout the world, that are not served by commercial aviation. Of the 5,000 airports nationwide, only 500 are served by common carriers that would be going out from different cities across their countries and our country.…”