David Thomas: “I simply want to rise to join in the congratulation of the leadership of this bill. It has been a pleasure for me to…”

“I simply want to rise to join in the congratulation of the leadership of this bill. It has been a pleasure for me to serve on this committee and on this subcommittee, and to see us coming finally to closure on a bill that I suspect is one of the most important that we will deal with in the next several years. It is certainly one of the most contentious, because it is one in which each of us seeks to satisfy our own needs, one in which we finally have to come to some accommodation for the different kinds of needs we have, and certainly no one is ever going to be perfectly satisfied. But I think we have come to a very successful conclusion in this bill. I hope that we can maintain basically the formulas that we struck. Obviously, the total spending is one of the issues. Obviously, the formula for distribution is one of the issues. Each of us have differences. Some of us have lots of miles and not many people; some of us have lots of public lands, and so on. So it is most difficult. I simply want to congratulate the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member, as well as the chairman and ranking member of the committee, and urge that we get on with it. Our States are waiting to be assured of the funds they will have, particularly in our northern States where the contracting season and the construction season is relatively short.”