Political Quotes

“You make an important point about neglect of that infrastructure, not only with levees and with waterways, but you and I are both aware, as is the country, of the tragic examples over the last several years--in Minnesota, for example, in the bridge collapse, and more recently in Washington, I believe, in that bridge collapse. Those are lessons to this Congress that we cannot neglect our infrastructure. It is vital. I mentioned Texas. By that same report that Congressman Delaney mentioned, we have about 1,300 bridges that have been declared functionally obsolete. That's 1,300 functionally obsolete bridges in Texas. That's one in six. So those are things that we've got to attend to here. It also begs the point: whether it's building out the infrastructure of transportation or building out the infrastructure of opportunity, that doesn't happen by itself. It doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen by luck. The United States Government and the Congress must make those smart investments. We must continue to make those investments if we are going to be the land of opportunity not just 5 years from now or 20 years from now but 50 and 100 years from now.”