Thomas Daschle: “I rise for a moment to congratulate all of those Senators who have had so much to do with the success that we have just…”

“I rise for a moment to congratulate all of those Senators who have had so much to do with the success that we have just demonstrated with the passage of the Interstate Transportation Efficiency Act, the so-called ISTEA II bill. Senator Baucus, Senator Chafee, Senator Warner, Senator Byrd, and Senator Gramm deserve our accolades and our commendation for a job extraordinarily well done. This represents the single biggest investment in our infrastructure in our Nation's history. It represents an effort to recognize the importance of infrastructure and the array of challenges that we face in an information age, as well as at the turn of this century and the entrance into a new millennium. It also recognizes the importance of regional balance--the West, the South, the Northeast, the Midwest--all with our disparate challenges and problems that we face with infrastructure, all with the needs, all with the recognition that our States are vastly different as those needs are reflected in public policy. This not only represents the greatest investment, in my view, it represents as well the best regional balance that we have been able to demonstrate.”