Political Quotes

“I want to make note, the highway program funding mechanism expires at the end of this month. It expires; that means it runs out of funding. Voting against this bill causes the program to shut down, causes a decline, a dropoff on investment in our Nation's infrastructure. Right now, we are seeing growth; we are seeing increasing demand. As the gentleman from Oregon just noted, we are seeing underinvestment in our infrastructure system. We have got to increase the investment. We have got to work hard to address the outdated funding mechanism that funds our current highway system. As was noted, we have lost value in the current funding mechanism. Having a user fee is absolutely critical, but a user fee that ensures the level of investment that we truly need. This extension gives us time to recreate that. We have been using the same user fee for decades, a user fee with static figures since 1993, as was just mentioned, and a user fee that has conflicting Federal policies that reduces the value of the income of this trust fund as a result of the corporate average fuel economy or CAFE standards that require greater fuel efficiency out of vehicles. We have got to take a fresh look at this. We have got to take this time and use it wisely to ensure that we can ensure the level of funding that we need to invest in our Nation's infrastructure. We need a fundamentally different approach, and we need to do it without raising taxes. Mr.…”