Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to comment that I have dramatically shortened my presentation, as I was crossing off things from my list that have already been more eloquently expressed by my friend from Kansas, and I think it shows. He brought out a point I think is significant; that the first of the year we were able to pass the highway bill, which is a major piece of legislation. It is the first time since 1998 we were able to get that reauthorization bill, and it was because of the interim period of time we had the short-term fixes that the Senator from Kansas was talking about. Those are expensive, and you can't do major overhauls, improvements, and modernization unless you have an authorization bill, and this covers a lot of areas. I want to repeat one thing the Senator from Kansas stated, and that is in reference to Senators Thune and Nelson. Any time you--and I would say this to all of the members of the Commerce Committee--any time you get a major piece of legislation that covers a lot of stuff, there is always a lot of confusion and some opposition, although not as much opposition to this as we had anticipated would be taking place. So there are areas I want to visit that I have a special interest in. One is the certification process for general aviation pilots. I know this was mentioned by Senator Moran, but this is something that is very significant. I want to cover it in perhaps a little bit more detail, along with the other areas and an amendment we have.…”