Political Quotes

“I thank the vice chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee from the State of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the INVEST in America Act which authorizes billions of dollars in direct infrastructure investment over the next 5 years to address America's crumbling wastewater and local water quality challenges--something we know all too well in Michigan, particularly in the wake of our communities being deluged by storms and deluged by wastewater coming up into our roads and into people's homes. Less than 50 years ago, many U.S. rivers were little more than open sewers with some so polluted that they literally caught fire--something that, yet again, motivated Members of Congress from Michigan to enact landmark legislation. But even today, communities are struggling. For instance, for decades, to this day, residents of Centreville, Illinois, a nearly all Black town of 5,000 in southern Illinois, just a 12-minute drive from downtown East St. Louis, had been dealing with persistent flooding and sewage overflows. The smell of it is in the air and all over the town after a rain, and bits of soggy toilet paper and slicks of human waste cling to the grass in the neighborhoods where children used to play on warm days. This, Mr. Speaker, is why we commit to an infrastructure bill because we are standing for the guarantee that everyone deserves to live safely and in clean environments. With that, Mr.…”