Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we have so many elements of the bill that is under consideration now, the DRIVE Act. It is enjoyable to talk about it. Yesterday we talked about the transparency, the fact that we have a way that the public can know every dime. I was watching as the Presiding Officer was giving a presentation on waste in government. That is not the case here. If all government agencies had the transparency we are going to have with the DRIVE Act, where everyone is going to know on a day-to-day basis the progress of every bridge, every highway that is being done, the renovations, then we wouldn't be having that problem. We are doing it right. You know, I look at these different parts of the bill. It is so big, you can talk about it for a long period of time. Yesterday we went over not all of the deficient bridges in the country but quite a few of them, and when people stop and realize that people die unnecessarily because of deficiencies in our bridges--it is a serious thing. But one of the parts of this bill that people are not aware of as much as they should be is the freight section of the bill, transporting freight around. We talked about the history. We talked about the fact that the first bill that came along for a transportation reauthorization bill back in 1956 was primarily for military purposes. Now we realize the deficiency--we are compared to China, compared to other countries in not keeping up our highway system.…”