Political Quotes

“First, I want to thank my colleague, Senator Cardin, and just recently Senator Brown of Ohio, for referencing the highway bill. The state of play on that at this point is that the House has just passed another extension. We passed an extension back at the end of March that extended the existing highway program to the end of June. What that bill did is cause significant job loss because not knowing for sure what the highway plan will be means that jobs will fall off the list of the departments of transportation around the country. So a further extension to September--which just passed the House 1 hour ago--just makes the situation even worse. The solution to that problem is to make sure the House and the Senate appoint their conferees so we can get to conference quickly on that bill and get out a lasting authorization. So I want to again thank Senator Cardin for spending some time on the floor this afternoon on that subject. We will keep the pressure on until we actually have a highway authorization as we go through these different procedural hurdles. Climate Change I came to speak on the floor about an issue that many in Washington would prefer to ignore; that is, climate changes that are being caused by our carbon pollution. Nature keeps sending us messages about what is happening out there, and in Washington we continue to ignore those messages. But they keep on coming.…”