Political Quotes

“Absolutely. I would respond to my friend, yes. I have been in on the negotiations, yes. This is not something that has taken place over the last 2 weeks. This committee--Senator Inhofe, Senator Jeffords, Senator Bond, and Senator Reid has spent months working on this bill. Of course, the administration was in on every one--not every one of them but a lot of those conversations. Yes, we originally wanted a bill much bigger than this one, but because of the pressure we got from the White House and other places we have the bill now the number that it is. So I absolutely have followed this very closely. This bill is extremely important. This is the fourth or fifth highway bill I have worked on. Before I was interrupted, I was talking about how much better this bill is than the bills in the past when States gave away 25 percent of the money that came into their States. It was determined, when the so-called four managers started this, what we would like to do with legislation. What we wanted to do was to try to work it out so that every State of the 50 States would get 95 cents out of every dollar they put into the trust fund.”