Political Quotes

“I am delighted to follow my colleague from Louisiana because I am rising this evening to talk about a bill she has put an enormous amount of effort into, and she has had a very significant role in the success of the bill that I am going to talk about. We have a bill in Congress that is perhaps the most significant jobs bill that will be able to pass in this session. It is described as producing 2.9 million jobs--nearly 3 million jobs. Rhode Island is a relatively small State, but it means 9,000 jobs in the State of Rhode Island. We have about 60,000 people out of work right now in Rhode Island; 9,000 would take a significant number of those folks and enable them to get to work. It is a serious jobs bill. It also went through a completely impeccable process in the Senate. It passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee with the strong support of our chairman, Barbara Boxer, and the equally strong support of her ranking member, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. They come from quite different political persuasions, but they were together on this bill and it passed unanimously out of the Environment and Public Works Committee. It came to the floor. We had a completely open process on the floor. It spent 5 weeks on this floor being discussed, debated, and amended. It was quite thoroughly amended. There were more than 40 amendments that were either voted on or accepted while it was on the floor.…”