Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I support hard infrastructure. It is in my DNA. As a kid, I grew up shoveling asphalt. My father and my grandfather were in the road construction business. I served as the economic development commissioner in my home State of Tennessee. I understand firsthand the importance of quality infrastructure. It was essential to attracting good jobs to my State. So I am in complete agreement that shoring up our hard infrastructure is a worthy cause. This bill does some of that, and that is good. But there are both good ways and bad ways to achieve noble ends. And the question is, What is the best way to achieve this goal? And my frustration is with the methods and with the vehicle that is being used here. The first problem is that the bill sponsors repeatedly said it would be paid for. In fact, it is not. And it is more than a little bit off. It is over a quarter of a trillion dollars short. That is almost seven times the budget of my home State of Tennessee. We waited weeks for the text of this legislation. And before the text even existed, the Democrat leader forced the Senate to vote on proceeding to it. There is absolutely no reason for rushing this process and attempting to limit scrutiny of this bill other than the Democrats' completely artificial, self-imposed, and politically driven timeline. There will be more on that later. The text, all 2,700-plus pages of it, was finally made available to us 6 days ago.…”