John W. Olver: “Woman, I understand that since I claimed the time in opposition, I retain, then, the right to strike the last word, so I…”

“Woman, I understand that since I claimed the time in opposition, I retain, then, the right to strike the last word, so I have struck the last word. Thank you very much. Just to continue this one, New York, at the present time, is benefiting from enormous additional investments in two major projects. One reaches out into Long Island, the so-called East Side Access project, which you wouldn't know or care, perhaps, much about because it reaches to all the population out on Long Island--to the east, to that direction for you, to the east--and the Second Avenue Subway. {time} 2140 So that New York system has those two very large programs. Each one of them is about $2 billion. That's $2 billion going on concurrently with what this 10-year program is for the maintenance of the system here in Washington, when we have had clear evidence of safety difficulties and equipment difficulties that had not been taken into account. We were not putting enough investment into the maintenance of the Washington system. And to add to the gentleman from Virginia's comment about this, our constituents from every district all over the country come to Washington and deserve to have a really good public transportation system in Washington. So it is in all of our interests to make certain that that system is up to snuff on safety and the equipment is in good repair. So I have no apology whatsoever for supporting this one, and would strongly urge that we defeat this amendment.…”