Political Quotes

“Last week I was proud to stand with representatives of the U.S. Chamber, the AFL-CIO, contractors, local government, transit, truckers, AAA, engineers, and environmentalists, all supporting my legislation, H.R. 3636, to update the gas tax. It inspired the predictable firestorm. There was a rant from a shouting head on Fox who thought not only did we not need transportation money, but thought that the previous money had somehow disappeared. Even the people who supported the gas tax said it was a horrible idea, like the article in Slate saying it is the best least-popular idea in politics. It provoked a torrent of reaction--some laudatory, some inflammatory. But it boiled down to basically three major points: Where did this idea come from? Well, it came from my decades of work in transportation, studying, listening to people from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon; North Carolina to Seattle to California. It was 10 years of experience that I had directing the transportation functions at the city of Portland as the Commissioner of Public Works where I saw firsthand the impact of poor and declining infrastructure. It is every single major independent study that says we need more money for transportation, not less, and it is a disaster that we are poised to slash transportation funding October 1 unless something happens. The question was asked: Isn't this unfair to lower-income Americans? Well, actually no.…”