Political Quotes

“in just 10 days, authorization for the highway trust fund will expire. The fund will run out of money entirely by the end of July, which means transportation projects in New Hampshire and across this country will grind to a halt. What is Congress's response to this crisis? This week, leadership will bring to the floor yet another inadequate short-term extension of the highway trust fund authorization, and there is no plan whatsoever to address the insolvency of the fund. In other words, once again, we are kicking the can down the road. But in this case the road is overwhelmed by traffic, badly in need of modernization, and filled with patches and potholes. For a country that seeks to remain competitive in the 21st century global economy, this is totally dysfunctional and unacceptable. I know my colleagues and the Presiding Officer travel around the city of Washington. Sometimes I feel like I am in a Third World country when I travel along the roads in DC. There are few more basic and necessary functions of government than providing for modernized highways, bridges, and other infrastructure. Yet Congress is grossly neglecting this responsibility. China spends about 9 percent of their gross domestic product on infrastructure, Brazil spends about 8 percent, but infrastructure spending in the United States has fallen to just 2 percent of our GDP. That is half of what we were spending in the 1960s.…”