Political Quotes

“With this strained legislation, we are bumping into two major social problems: deadly drunk driving on our roads and a broken immigration system. Alas, we are not doing anything to solve either problem. The bill pretends to do something about both of them, but it really does little or nothing about either of them. We lose 11,000 people a year to drunk driving crashes. More than a million people are arrested on DUI charges every year, Mr. Speaker. I lost a beloved cousin of mine in Florida who was in the prime of her life just after graduating from college when she was killed by a drunk driver while she was riding a bicycle on the roads of Florida. I take this issue of drunk driving very seriously. I have worked on it fastidiously for a long time in my career. There is a lot we could do in Congress to improve safety on the streets, including imposing a nationwide mandatory ignition interlock device on the cars of all convicted drunk drivers. We could also pass my bill, the Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Active Transportation Safety Act, which would support State and local government efforts to build safer transportation networks for bicyclists and for pedestrians. Unfortunately, this bill does not do anything like that. Indeed, it is hard to see how it will reduce drunk driving at all.”