Political Quotes

“Obviously, the gentleman has spoken to a number of very important pieces of legislation, and I want to talk about those. Then I want to talk about what I believe to be a diversion from the important business of this country. But I will get to, first, the highway conference. On Friday, it will be 100 days since the Senate has passed a bipartisan bill, a bill which had 75 Members of the United States Senate for it. That conference has not yet reported out. I understand there is some activity on that. The House overwhelmingly voted for the Walz MTI, and it said the conferees ought to report out a conference report by tomorrow. I don't know whether that's about to happen--today is tomorrow--but we will see whether or not it proceeds. Perhaps the gentleman can give us some information on that issue. I've offered a motion, as the gentleman knows, to instruct to give the House an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill if we can't wait for a bill that comes out of conference. Clearly, if it doesn't come out of conference, it's going to cost us a lot of jobs. It will not protect the 1.9 million jobs the Senate bill protects, and it will not create approximately 1 million additional jobs. As the gentleman knows, it is our view that we've been considering a lot of legislation which does not create jobs, does not impact positively the growth in our economy; but I think there is little dispute that the highway bill will in fact do that.…”