Patty Murray: “we are about to begin one of the busiest travel seasons of the year--the week of our Thanksgiving holiday. The millions…”

“we are about to begin one of the busiest travel seasons of the year--the week of our Thanksgiving holiday. The millions of Americans who will take to our Nation's roads, rails, and airways probably won't have the country's transportation budget on their minds. But we had them in mind as we put together this bipartisan Transportation-Housing appropriations bill and negotiated the conference agreement before us today. Unfortunately, the Senate Republican leadership has now formally blocked our ability to have a vote on this conference agreement and move it to the White House. And that is shameful. Our conference report invests in rebuilding our infrastructure and modernizing our safety systems. It spends the money needed to adequately staff our air traffic control towers and hire the safety inspectors for aircraft, pipelines, and railroads that are needed to protect us. It rejects misguided budget cuts proposed by the White House to slash the number of safety inspectors, underfund our highway needs, and throw Amtrak into bankruptcy. This bill also keeps faith with another American Thanksgiving tradition--giving back to those who are less fortunate. It rejects the President's proposals to slash housing funds for the elderly and the disabled and provides necessary increases to shelter the homeless and keep federally subsidized tenants in their homes.”