Susan Collins

I hope you really will take a look at that. Maybe there is a way to carve out those individuals who are going through Job Corps or vocational education and really getting trained very well between the age of 16 and 18.

Another area where there appears to be duplication is the new $500 million Rapid Growth Area Transit Grant Program that would support bus rapid transit services.

In reviewing the budget, I was struck by the fact that given the backlog of roadway and bridge improvement projects nationwide, that the budget proposes a 60 percent increase in transit spending, but only a 17 percent increase for highways.

According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), 10 percent of our Nation's bridges are structurally deficient.

Although I, too, believe that we need to reform our tax code, I do not think that it is realistic to assume that we will be able to do so this year.

I am concerned that the Department has failed to fully examine what the implications are of establishing a Federal standard without regard to the existing laws in each State.

I am also interested in your Critical Immediate Investments Program.

Thank you. Secretary Foxx, just following up quickly on the chairman's question on the General Motors recall.

Generous funding, as the chairman pointed out, is requested for the TIGER program, a program that I strongly support.

I am disappointed that the President's budget once again contains what I believe to be unrealistic assumptions about solving the Highway Trust Fund crisis.

More important, this proposal does not represent a long-term solution to the funding woes of the Highway Trust Fund, and once again kicks the can down the road.

I urge Congress to act.

Indeed, Congress would be departing from its own fundamental principles if it sought to bind future Congresses from absolutely any reconsideration of what was legislated by its predecessors.

But certainly Dodd-Frank is not such a perfect piece of legislation that any and all amendments should be resisted for all time.

The legislation previously proposed by Senators Brown and Johanns, and today by Senator Collins, represents a sound basis for moving forward.

I would strongly urge Congress to act to prevent a result that is so clearly unwarranted and potentially so damaging.

I hope that during this additional period of study, and in view of the firm Congressional support for resolution of the issue, the Federal Reserve will move expeditiously to find an interpretative solution to the problem.

That, in the financial crisis, holding companies were a source of weakness, rather than strength, to their operating subsidiaries.

The Bank Capital Framework was not designed to, and does not, take into account the critically significant differences between the business of banking and the business of insurance.

Consideration should be given to the distinctions between banks and insurance companies.

It was not the intent of Congress to supplant prudential State-based insurance regulation with a bank-centric capital regime.

It was not Congress's intent that Federal regulators supplant prudential State-based insurance regulation with a bank-centric capital regime.

We must not take action that would diminish the taxpayer protections that provided the motivation for my writing the Collins amendment.

I believe that the language that I have introduced should give the Fed the clarity it needs.

I want to especially thank you, Chairman Brown and Senator Johanns, for your hard work.