Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair for yielding. As a member of the Transportation Committee, I would like to congratulate Senator Boxer for her extraordinary efforts in pushing this bill forward. This is an enormously important bill that took a lot of hard work, and I commend her for the work she and her staff have done. Senator Inhofe and I have very little in common politically, but I also wish to applaud him and his staff for coming together on this issue and doing something that is extremely important and doing it in a bipartisan way. Anyone who drives in the State of Vermont or, for that matter, drives around America, understands, to a significant degree, our infrastructure is collapsing. In Vermont, we have dozens and dozens of bridges that are in need of repair. We have many hundreds of miles of roads that need repair. Our public transit system needs help. What this bill is about is a start toward rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our public transit and, in the process, putting a significant number of people back to work. It is estimated this bill will save more than 1.8 million jobs nationwide in each of the next 3 years, and it will create 1 million new jobs through an expanded infrastructure financing program. What that means in the State of Vermont are thousands and thousands of decent-paying construction and other types of jobs, something we sorely need. So this bill is an excellent start. Does it go as far as it should?…”