Political Quotes

“Yes. When I served in the House of Representatives, I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee. I was dumbfounded. We have all this surplus food and we would take it to other continents, for example, to Africa, and the food would never get where it was supposed to go. Why? Simple. There was no way of hauling it to the places where it was needed. They had an insufficient transportation program in many of these countries. People were starving to death and they couldn't get the food where it was needed. We don't have anything like that, but it does illustrate why we have to have the ability to move things easier. Each year that goes by, we have to make it easier because we have competition around the world. The more people who are tied up in traffic, in trucks and trains and in personal vehicles, the less competitive we will be. That is what this bill is all about. For my friend to suggest let's just extend this for a year, come back and look at it again--we have already done that once. The State of Nevada and the other 49 States were grousing when we did that. Why? Because these highway programs, many of them, are multiyear programs. If they can't enter into a multiyear contract, it wastes a lot of money. It wastes money. Something that would have cost $3 million, if we extend this now for an extra year, by the time we finish it could wind up costing $6 million, twice as much as it ordinarily would cost. Without what we have in this bill, we would get a lot less product.”