Political Quotes

“let me again underscore that it has been clearly demonstrated that project labor agreements, union-only project labor agreements, do hurt women and minorities and also hurt women- and minority-owned businesses. They are often shut out or disadvantaged through those agreements because of historical factors. That is one reason, among many, why all of those organizations I cited, including organizations representing minority- and women-owned businesses, strongly support my stand-alone bill and strongly support my amendment. In addition, the distinguished Senator from Maryland talked about cost. PLAs do impact cost. They push up cost. If they make cost reliable, they only make them reliably high. A good example is the $2.4 billion project right here to replace the Wilson Bridge between suburban Maryland and Virginia. When a union-only PLA requirement was pushed by former Maryland Governor Glendening, that threw a wrench into the project and drove costs up 78 percent. After that, President Bush issued an Executive order to do away with those PLAs, and phase 1 of the bridge project was rebid. Multiple bids were received, and the winning bids came in significantly below engineering estimates. Today, with that rule against the PLA requirement, the project is almost complete and substantially under budget. I have example after example such as that, where union-only PLAs do jack up the cost to the taxpayer.”