Political Quotes

“Madam President, infrastructure is important. We all need it. We rely on it to get to and from our homes, to and from work. We rely on it for our day-to-day needs. It has to be there. Not all of it has to be Federal, and what is Federal can be made more efficient. My amendment today is directed at exactly that set of objectives. It would finally resolve the fiscal insolvency of the highway trust fund and give Americans a tax cut. It would allow Americans to pay less and Federal, State, and local governments to build more. Pay less, build more--that is the emphasis of this entire amendment. We should pay less for what we need, and we should build more of it. Specifically, my amendment would transfer $120 billion in unused COVID-19 funds to the highway trust fund. It returns the scope of the highway trust fund dollars so that they can be used only for projects on the Interstate Highway System. This was, after all, why the gasoline tax was created, and it ought to be what we use it for today. After all, most roads are not interstate, and most systems are not the Interstate Highway System. The Federal Government doesn't need to do all of it. And, in fact, what we find is that, when States and localities do infrastructure, they can do so more efficiently, far less expensively as a result of the Byzantine labyrinth of Federal regulations that you have to comply with as soon as you are doing any kind of a road project that involves even a single dollar of Federal funds.…”