Political Quotes

“another way to describe this amendment, which deals with the transportation and environmental review process that is central to getting these projects on line and dealing with our transportation issues, is the ``do-it-right-once'' amendment. What we have in this country today is essentially a disjointed process for doing transportation and environmental reviews. In effect, you have one track going down the road trying to address the various requirements essential to OK'ing a project from the transportation side. You then have a separate effort going forward to deal with environmental reviews. Instead of the two efforts being combined at every step of the process, time and money is wasted as these separate undertakings go forward. So what you have is an extraordinary amount of duplication. You have duplication as it relates to the environmental side and as it relates to the transportation side, and you waste an extraordinary amount of time as it relates to getting these projects actually constructed. I think, as every Senator knows, for transportation projects time is money. Delays in approving transportation projects not only increase the cost of these projects; they also cause lost productivity to our economy and added stress for the commuters that are stuck in traffic. This bill is the result of extensive bipartisan discussion. Senator Graham and I began this in the committee many months ago.…”