Jim Inhofe: “I was able to listen to the Senator from Ohio, Mr. DeWine. He has always led this body in the concern for safety. He…”

“I was able to listen to the Senator from Ohio, Mr. DeWine. He has always led this body in the concern for safety. He points out the critical need to finish this bill. Hopefully, today we will finish this bill because we have the longest, most comprehensive safety core section, title, in this bill that has ever been offered in any reauthorization since Eisenhower. That is why we say, as I think Senator DeWine was pointing out, lives can be saved or lives can be lost, depending on whether we pass this bill. We will not have the safety core programs if we merely have an extension. Right now we are on our sixth extension. An extension is nothing but a defeat, an admission that we are not able to get a bill through so let's have what we had before. That's actually an extension of what we passed 7 years ago. It doesn't have any of these things in it. If we have an extension, none of the safety core programs Senator DeWine was talking about would be included. I can tell you--and I think everyone knows--statistically, it is an absolute that people will die; not just adults driving, but one of the things in this bill is the Safe Routes to School provision which would save young lives--kids going to school. So it is a life-or-death matter that we pass this bill and pass it very soon. When I say ``very soon,'' we ought to pass it today because the extension, this sixth extension I refer to, is going to expire on May 31.…”