Political Quotes

“I appreciate my friend allowing me to speak on this. There is no one I have more respect for than my good friend from Tennessee. I had a great time working with him on a variety of things when I was on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. But with all due respect, I think the issue here is what we're going to do to renew and rebuild America. For the first time in history, our Republican friends gave us a partisan transportation reauthorization. Never before have we seen anything like this offered up. There wasn't even a hearing before the full committee before it was advanced. It went right to work session. There was no effort to involve people on the other side of the aisle. We were given a piece of legislation that attacked transit, that scaled down funding, that was against the most popular programs, the ones that have the greatest local involvement, the enhancements. It was an environmental catastrophe. It was so bad that my Republican colleagues couldn't even bring their bill to the floor. They withdrew it. And so we had the ninth extension. We have been given a bill in the other body that, as my good friend from Minnesota pointed out, received 74 votes. It will give us two complete construction cycles. It does, in fact, accelerate environmental processes. There is a compromise, a bipartisan compromise, on the previous contentious area of enhancements. It is a reasonable way for us to go forward. Mr.…”