James Oberstar

I think it would be beneficial to get the Corps back into this picture, however good your private contractor may well be.

In the next transportation bill, we are going to have a further transformation of the office of the Federal Highway Administration, to have an office of livability...

My goal is, in the next transportation bill, in the Federal Highway Administration, to establish an office of project expediting.

If the gentleman would yield. I have had that experience over the last eight years. I don't expect that procedure to continue under this Administration.

That is a very honest answer.

They have to all remember that this is stimulus money. It is 100 percent federally funded. They can't substitute it for something else.

We will expect that information, Mr. Salt.

We insisted on transparency, accountability, and openness.

We are not a Third World country on the Great Lakes. We are not a colony.

He never missed a moment.

I have one of the green pens that Lyndon Johnson used to sign that bill into law.

I insisted on transparency and accountability, and deadlines for the State DOTs to meet.

It is an intriguing idea of using the community development block grant program...

I thank the gentlewoman for those questions, for the observations she made.

Your seriousness of purpose is very reassuring to me and should be reassuring to the whole Country.

Let me say that it has been a privilege to participate in the most ambitious effort to improve our Nation's infrastructure since Eisenhower commissioned the interstate highway system more than half a century ago.

I think we need to look at who gets the money and, again, how the money is spent.

I think those who raise these questions need to be a little more precise about what--not you, but the report you are citing.

I see we have an ally as we go forward in the livable communities initiative.

You are working, but there are 2 million construction workers who aren't. Your job, my job, our job together is to put them to work.

I don't know who made that decision about it doesn't compete as well. They are going to have to answer to me. I am not happy with that.

We want to see what is working and what is not, and it has to be subjected to the light of day.

We need to step it up further. Environmental permitting is only one of--well, it is a big one, but it is one of many, many permits that have to be issued.

We shouldn't have to go through a KGB organization.

We are doing that in the transportation bill. We made a good start on it in the SAFETEA legislation.