James Oberstar: “Mr. Speaker, the late Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, ``Here we go again.'' This is the third act of a play that does…”

“Mr. Speaker, the late Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, ``Here we go again.'' This is the third act of a play that does not have a number of acts pinned to it yet. In fact, we are setting a record today. This will be the longest extension of a transportation bill while working out a conference in recent memory, at least in the last decade or so. Now, that is not any fault of anyone in this body. Certainly not of the chairman. If the chairman had his way, we would have had this bill done 6 months to be at the $375 billion level. We will be building highways right now and bridges and transit systems. We would be investing in America. We would be on our way to having 475,000 new jobs in the marketplace by Labor Day and $80 billion of economic activity in the marketplace. We would have America back to work again if only the White House would have listened to our chairman. And I must say, Mr. Speaker, I have the greatest admiration for our chairman for standing up to this administration saying what he thinks is right.”