Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair. Mr. President, right now the reason there is this long wait is we are trying to get everything in place to pass a major piece of legislation, one that is quite significant. It is comparable to our Transportation bill, comparable to our TSCA bill on chemicals, and it is one that came out of our committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee. It is one I am very proud we were able to get done. Yesterday I talked about the WRDA bill and why it is so important to pass now, the WRDA bill being the water infrastructure bill. It gives recent real-world examples of the problems our Nation is facing and how this legislation can address them. Today I remind everyone of the process that got us here today. I think it is important because people are saying we don't go through the daylight very often, where everybody has a chance to participate-- everybody. We are in that process right now. Back in December of last year, Senator Boxer and I sent our ``Dear Colleague'' out to Members letting them know we were going to do a WRDA bill--Water Resources Development Act--in 2016. This was back in 2015, in December. Well, before the introduction of our bill and our markup in the EPW Committee, we sent out another email asking Members about their priorities, and we got them. We marked up WRDA on April 28, 2016. That means we actually worked on it for 4 months prior to that time, taking up the priorities that people were sharing with us.…”