Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I also rise in opposition to this amendment. I respect the gentleman from Michigan, particularly because he is from the Great Lakes region, too, and we need him as a strong voice for our Great Lakes, but I do think that cuts to these particular accounts really are counterproductive, for the following reasons. First of all, the most important step any country can take to deal with the deficit is to grow the economy. This particular budget, this particular set of accounts, particularly the Army Corps of Engineers, has the type of construction and building accounts that produce income. They produce income for people who do the work, but they also improve our ports. If you look all around Michigan, if you look at the Soo Locks, if you look at the assets just in our region of the country, the progress that a region can make, because it improves its ports and attendant roads and rails and so forth, creates opportunity for companies to locate and to grow. We just had a phenomenal announcement in the city of Toledo this week by the Cleveland-Cliffs company. We have been working for 30 years to improve the port to connect rail and to have east to west, north to south highway improvements. By golly, it worked with a $700 million investment by the private sector. It was just so exciting to bring ore from Michigan and Minnesota into the lower lakes. It was really quite incredible. So these dollars yield results.…”