Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it is my understanding that the Senator from Indiana, Mr. Coats, is going to want some time to speak, and I am very flexible today. I just want to visit about the bill. We have so many parts of this, and I think that people have not really had a chance, and a lot of Members have not really gotten into the bill to see how far it goes and what it does. This is the sixth one of these that I have had since I have been here in the House and the Senate. We had one in the House first. This bill, I think, is really good. People forget that the last big bill we had was in 2005. It was a 5- year bill and it is very similar to the bill before us today. There were projects that took place that were in that bill that are now complete. In my State of Oklahoma, we had a bridge in terrible condition in Oklahoma City. In fact, we had a terrible accident. A lady with her three small children was driving under the bridge and concrete dropped and killed her. This has happened. I spoke yesterday about all the bridges and the problems that exist around this country with all of our deficient bridges. So it is serious. Since 2009 we have not had a long-term bill. This is it. We have been operating on short-term extensions. There have been a total of 33 short-term extensions. On short-term extensions you can't get anything done. You cannot have any major reforms. In this bill we have reforms in the NEPA system, the environmental system.…”