Political Quotes

“Mr. President, at the first public meeting of the conference committee charged with producing transportation reauthorization legislation, I laid out a series of basic principles that I think should guide our efforts to finance transportation policy. I had voted against the Senate bill in large part because it failed to follow these basic principles. Boiled down, these principles are simple. The user-pays model that is the reason for the creation of the Highway Trust Fund should be preserved. Revenues and spending should line up on a year-to-year basis. We should avoid spending down the trust fund. And we should not raise taxes, but rather should examine the spending side of the ledger. The conference agreement is an even further departure from these principles than the Senate bill was. The conference agreement by and large uses sources of revenue that are problematic in and of themselves to facilitate yet another general fund transfer that requires our Nation to make payments for 10 years on 2 years of programs. Despite all of the committee markups, and staff meetings, and press conferences, and frantic press accounts, at the end of the day we simply got the fourth in a series of general fund transfers that stretches back to 2008. I think the supposed consensus the conference committee product represents can best be summed up by the Margaret Thatcher quote I cited at the Finance Committee markup of a revenue title held on February 7.…”