Political Quotes

“I come from rural Pennsylvania, where the Allegheny National Forest is in my district, 520,000 acres. I happen to know the person that runs the forest, manages the forest. He talked this morning with the man that does the contracts. I know the design engineer that designs the roads. I understand how the system works. The gentlemen may not like the system, but what they are doing is not the way to fix it. The Porter-Kennedy amendment is like an MX missile on rural Pennsylvania's economy and our rural road system. It is devastating. It will harm parts, and even more so in the west, that have 15 and 20 percent unemployment. We have a group of urban legislators who in my view of listening to all of their testimony know very little about this issue and how it really works. We are playing with the rural economy of this country and the parts of the country that are most struggling economically. We are really cutting $91 million out of rural road maintenance when we take $50 million out of the credit program and $41 million out of the maintenance program because that is what the majority of it is used for.”