Political Quotes

“Mr. President, very shortly we are going to be adjourning for a very important briefing, but first I feel I should just briefly respond to my friend from New Jersey on a few of the points he raised. I recognize that he is not a member of the Appropriations Committee, and I doubt he was hanging on my every word when I described what was in the bill earlier today, but the fact is we have some very important truck safety provisions that are in the bill. For example, we require the Department to issue long-delayed regulations that deal with requiring speed governors that limit the speed at which trucks can travel. That rulemaking has been delayed an astonishing 22 times. We require the Department to proceed to issue those rules within 60 days of the enactment of this bill. That is a very important provision. If my colleague is worried about truckdrivers exceeding the speed limit and causing an accident, he should be applauding this bill, which says to the Department, in no uncertain terms: Stop delaying. It is past time to issue this regulation. Another very important safety provision that is in this bill has to do with requiring electronic logs. This is an important safety provision because it will prevent those few bad actors in the trucking industry from falsifying their paper logs. We will know for certain how long they were behind the wheel and on the road, and we will know whether they are complying with the hours of service provisions.…”