Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today I wish to speak in support of the surface transportation conference report. As chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, which is responsible for authorizing the public transportation portion of the bill, I was proud to serve as one of the conferees. After intense and exhaustive negotiations our conference committee reached an agreement on a bill that will benefit every American. In my home State of South Dakota alone, this bill will support 10,000 jobs and across the country it will support nearly 3 million jobs. It will improve rural transit service and make our Nation's highways safer and more efficient. I am relieved that we will not let another construction season go by without certainty of Federal funding. From the start, the Banking Committee worked in a bipartisan fashion on the transit reauthorization which is why we were able to pass our portion of this bill out of committee by a unanimous voice vote. I am happy to say that most of our committee-passed bill is still intact in the final product we have before us today. This conference report will increase funding for public transportation through the end of fiscal year 2014 and deliver critical investments in the Nation's aging transit infrastructure. In addition, the bill will institute much needed reforms such as speeding the construction of public transportation projects. The bill also includes transit safety provisions that have been stalled for 3 years.…”