Political Quotes

“with the greatest personal respect for my colleagues from Illinois and Missouri, I oppose the gentleman from Illinois' amendment to increase funding for this program from the $42 million included in the bill to approximately $150 million per year. While I agree that providing transportation for welfare recipients to get to jobs is critical, I question whether increasing the funding for the pilot program contained in this bill is the best approach to achieving this worthy result. This pilot program promotes new and innovative approaches to providing transportation and makes funding available to nontraditional transit grant recipients in addition to public transit agencies. There is concern among some in the transit community that a new program that is large and proscriptive is not only unnecessary but would take flexibility and control away from transit agencies whose very mission it is to provide access to jobs. There also are significant transportation resources for access to jobs activities under a number of federally funded social services programs already in place.”