Political Quotes

“I can identify with the frustration of the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) because you really did do your job. You have gotten a good bipartisan bill out of committee, and I know it because up close there were things that both chairmen worked with me on together. Their bipartisan bill did not have privatization. It is really hard to find out who are the folks that are for privatization because you will not find them in the committee, and you will not find them in the House and the Senate, and that is who I thought we were. This breaks my heart because both chairmen worked so closely with me to get changes in this bill that I wanted and some of them were controversial. An example is the slots, very controversial. I did not get all I wanted, but instead of the proposed 36, it is down to 20 and we worked together to get that. I worked with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) and the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) because general aviation here had not been reimbursed and everybody else had been reimbursed. They said we will work with you and they did. There is $100 million in here for the small airports that were not reimbursed the way the big airlines were. D.C. was hit especially hard because we are not open yet.”