Source: United States Senator for Kentucky Mitch McConnell
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding infrastructure:
“A number of our colleagues in both parties worked through the weekend to finalize their draft agreement on a major bill for our nation’s infrastructure.
“I want to thank the Senators who have worked hard and long to get this effort this far already. I’m confident that out of the 100 of us who serve in this body, 100 of us will be able to find parts of this legislation that we wish were different.
“But I believe our colleagues’ draft text provides a good and important jumping-off point for what needs to be a robust and bipartisan process here on the floor.
“Infrastructure is exactly the kind of subject that Congress should be able to address across the aisle. Roads, bridges, waterways, airports — these things are not luxuries for the greatest nation in world history.
“They are necessities.
“Necessarily, legislation like this will be big and complex. It will necessarily affect all 50 states. That’s why — while I salute the hard work of my colleagues who produced the base text that’s now before us — their conversations can’t be the Senate’s last word.
“Senators on both sides expect and deserve opportunities to have a say and to put their own states’ imprints on this major bill. Just as infrastructure itself is not a luxury, but a necessity, the same goes for the Senate having a robust and bipartisan amendment process on legislation of this magnitude.
“Our full consideration of this bill must not be choked off by any artificial timetable that our Democratic colleagues may have penciled out for political purposes.
“Our bipartisan negotiators have already been taking this task very seriously. The American people need the Senate to continue taking it seriously.”
###