Our Nation's ability to meet demand for transit rises or falls with New Starts.

This bill recognizes that local leaders need support from the Federal Government, not orders.

Are there fiscal policy steps the Congress can take to improve the situation and reduce the headwinds against growth?

You could look at student loans. The President has talked about helping refinance student loans as a way of reducing consumer debt.

Those are the types of initiatives that I am thinking of as we talk about if you can reduce the debt burden, then you have greater spending capacity, which creates a ripple effect in the economy.

I do believe there is a macroeconomic significance to people being highly constrained by indebtedness.

In Afghanistan, the people overwhelmingly want us to stay, and every single contender in the Presidential election said they would sign the BSA.

But I did vote for Afghanistan. That is where Bin Laden was. That is where al-Qaeda was.

If Federal funding remains flat in the coming years, do you believe that we can make any progress toward eliminating the $86 billion backlog?

Your testimony notes that more people are choosing to live in urban areas where cars are less necessary, younger people less reliant on cars than previous generations.

Investing in our transportation infrastructure and supporting 10 billion passenger trips every year is essential to our mobility, our economic development, our air quality, our overall quality of life, our ability to create jobs, and our…

I look forward to working with all of you and others to develop a transit title that can begin to meet some of these needs for the next surface transportation bill.