Political Quotes

“I always enjoy sharing the debate with my good friend from Butler, Pennsylvania, who cares passionately about this country. He has some, I think, great ideas. We often find areas that we can agree. I think even the issue that we are debating today could be an area where we could find agreement, because what the President is proposing is not to levy a fee and have the money burned up. The President is proposing a fee to fix America's damaged infrastructure. I know my friend from Butler cares passionately about the people who he represents. They are paying a tax today for poor infrastructure. The average American pays three times with annual damage to their cars than what this fee would be, if it were translated directly to a gas tax increase. I note that his State of Pennsylvania actually has imposed an oil franchise fee which is the equivalent of about another 9.5 cent increase. Pennsylvania did that because their infrastructure is damaged. Well, that is what we should have as part of this discussion today. Again, we have a cartoon proposal that assumes that there is just a barrel fee that is just a burden on the American public and not look at what the fee is for, what benefits would accrue if, again, we had actually had the Ways and Means Committee meet and discuss the legislation that was referred to us. We didn't have a hearing on this.…”