Political Quotes

“Madam President, I compliment my distinguished colleague from New York on his remarks. I would like to add a few observations of my own, but first I want to echo very much what he said. What the President did last night was to point a finger toward the future, and some people were just capable of seeing the finger. But for most people, they saw where he was pointing, and he has pointed us toward an important future for our country. These are the issues we are going to have to address in the decades ahead, and we have to be prepared now. I want to touch on about three areas he pointed to. The first, of course, is infrastructure. I am not the only person in America who has noticed our crumbling infrastructure. Everybody who drives on our roads, everybody who goes across our bridges, everybody who has been to our water and sewage plants knows we have underinvested in those areas for decades. As the President pointed out last night, America's own engineers give America a D for the status of our infrastructure. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that we have $662 billion in total capital needs for clean water and drinking water investments over the next 10 years--$662 billion that we need to put into our water and water treatment system in the next 10 years. By contrast, in the so- called stimulus bill, we put in $6 billion; 1 percent of what we need.…”