Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for his time and will use this brief moment to be very specific. Under the programs in the stimulus, under the jurisdiction of our Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, we can account for 1,091,005 jobs in the past year, 1 year from date of enactment. We have this documented in 14 consecutive monthly hearings on progress made by State DOTs, transit agencies, metropolitan planning organizations and State Revolving Loan Fund organizations, as well as the other portions of our stimulus for which we have documented the funding investments that have created jobs. These are real jobs, building trades, associated general contractors who are putting people to work, putting their equipment to work on job sites where they were shut down the previous year. With those jobs, those workers are paying $353 million in Federal taxes, avoiding $279 million in unemployment compensation checks because they're getting a payroll check instead of an unemployment compensation check. We have 25,000 direct, on-project, full-time equivalent jobs in the Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund program, and paved 24,000 lane miles of highway and restored or replaced 1,200 bridges. That highway mileage is equivalent to half of the interstate highway systems that took 50 years to build. This was done in a year. This extension of funding for the surface transportation program will provide $77 billion to continue SAFETEA-LU for the next 15 months for the 15-month period.…”