David Thomas: “It is again time, as we begin this session of Congress, when challenges are before us--the opportunity to work on…”

“It is again time, as we begin this session of Congress, when challenges are before us--the opportunity to work on programs, some of which we worked on before and did not complete, some of which need to be worked on and haven't; such things as energy policy, of course, which we have worked on for some time. We are becoming more and more dependent as time goes by and as our consumption increases and our production does not. The highway bill we talked about for a good long time. It is most important for our economy, for our jobs, for our transportation, and we haven't been able to handle it in the last couple of years; to move into something such as the class action activity that we are committed to so that we are not moving the liability claims around to different States to find a jurisdiction that is most favorable; and to do something about tax simplification. We always talk about that. The Tax Code is that thick, and yet we continue to have it. We have a real opportunity to do a number of things, and I hope we are able to do that.”