Political Quotes

“we all understand that our country faces an array of major economic challenges, and I made the judgment quite some time ago that it was simply impossible to have big league economic wealth with little league transportation systems. All across the country--I know the distinguished Presiding Officer has seen this in Minnesota, where he has been doing good work on infrastructure and bridges--we have seen this in every corner. When the Senator from North Dakota came to the Senate, I had the good fortune to begin to have discussions with him with respect to some new ways to address the question of how to generate funds for the critical transportation work that needs to be done and to generate those funds in a fashion that would be acceptable to the American people. I think we all understand that with this kind of an economy and with skyrocketing gasoline prices, it is not very likely that folks will be marching outside our Senate offices anytime soon carrying signs saying: Senator, please raise the gas tax; that is what I hope you will spend your time doing. So we have this challenge given the fact that the traditional system of funding transportation--user fees--of course, in a tough economy, is going to be hard to suggest as a route to generate additional funds. So for quite some time I have been devoted to the cause of trying to find a way to secure the possibility of getting additional funds through transportation bonds.…”