Haley Stevens: “I am constrained to come here in two roles. One is as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. And I am certain…”

“I am constrained to come here in two roles. One is as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. And I am certain everyone will understand that problem. This is, obviously, a situation in which we negotiated a very tightly wrapped package, and it will eventually come to our committee. The distinguished Senator from West Virginia and I will allocate money under it. The real difficulty I see with the amendment of the Senator from Florida is, having reached an agreement of what to do with the 4.3 cents of the tax revenue, now that we have transferred it to the highway trust fund, it would be repealed. I just cannot understand an attempt to do that at this time, I say respectfully to my friend. I do understand people who are insisting that the donor States ought to be totally recognized to get 100 percent of their money back, and this obviously would be one way to do that. I am here in the second role as a Senator from the largest State in the Union, 20 percent of the landmass in the United States. I repeat for the Senate, we have a thousand miles more of roads now than when we became a State almost 40 years ago. We are completely locked out of this highway program. I wonder what Dwight D. Eisenhower, the person I consider to be one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, would feel about the concept that roads would only be built by those people who lived within the State.”