Jim Inhofe: “I see Senator Thomas, from a State such as Wyoming, falls into a category we are taking care of in the formulas. That is…”

“I see Senator Thomas, from a State such as Wyoming, falls into a category we are taking care of in the formulas. That is low-yield or low-population States. They have to be looked after. As he points out, people are driving through, yet they don't have the population base to be supporting large amounts of revenue to pay for the roads. On the other hand, we see Senators such as the Presiding Officer now, from the State of Texas, one of the fastest growing, largest States. He certainly has problems. So being very careful to try to take care of all these diverse needs in establishing a formula to put together something that would take care of the large States, we put in a ceiling and we put in a floor. We put something in there for donee and donor States. It is a very difficult formula. I remind my colleagues who might not feel this is a fair approach to it, to remember, to recall when we tried to do this before under TEA-21, we had a purely political system. Everybody got a percentage of the amount of money that was there and it was all driven by politics. Once they received 60 votes, they didn't care what happened. We are not doing that. We have a formula that takes care of all these needs.”