Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we are poised to pass a truly historic transportation bill and I wanted to engage in a brief colloquy with my colleague Chairman Johnson, with whom I have worked closely over the past year and a half to craft the transit title of the bill. He has been a true pleasure to work with and I think we should all be proud that we have secured stable funding for public transportation over the next 2 years. The bill has record amounts of rail funding and by abandoning earmarks, all of the major formula programs have been increased significantly. We have greatly enhanced the Federal Transit Administration's powers to provide safety oversight and set national standards, which will ensure millions of transit passengers can travel safely and efficiently. But for the purposes of this colloquy I wanted to focus on section 20013 on private sector participation in public transportation. I ask the chairman, does anything in this section show a preference by Congress for public transportation to be provided by private operators rather than public operators?”