Political Quotes

“I come to the floor this evening to discuss the bipartisan transportation jobs bill that has been lingering since March 14. March 14 was pretty early in the construction season. If the House had moved as quickly as they should have, if the House were not, apparently, held hostage by some tea party members who think transportation should be a State issue and the Federal Government shouldn't be involved, there would have been so many more jobs created in the Presiding Officer's State of North Carolina and in Ohio and elsewhere. Those tea party members should think about President Eisenhower's legacy when they talk about transportation being a State and not a Federal issue. The Senate passed this job-creating economic development bill more than 100 days ago, but this historically bipartisan highway bill remains stalled. We know investments in infrastructure mean jobs directly. We know investments in infrastructure mean economic development in the future. President Eisenhower and Congress established the Interstate Highway System not too many years after I was born, in the 1950s. A generation of Americans was set to work carving freeways, paving new roads, building bridges and tunnels across our great country that allowed people and products to travel across the 48 States. In the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s, we had an infrastructure which was the envy of the world--an infrastructure the likes of which the world had never seen.…”