Public Works Projects Quotes

This is our history - from the Transcontinental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, to the dredging of our ports and building of our most historic bridges - our American ancestors prioritized growth and investment in our nation's infrastructure.

Bridges and roads take years to build, but too often, states and communities haven't known if funding will be there for them more than a few months at a time.

The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?

[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt started more creations than were ever finished since Genesis—and finished none.

The New Deal exists principally on an emotional plane for Obama. To him, the New Deal is something you play like a song, to make you or your constituents feel better.

Millions are unemployed and our roads are falling apart. If we can spend $6 trillion sending people to war, we can spend $1 trillion to put Americans to work fixing our nation's crumbling infrastructure. Let's rebuild America and create jobs.

Let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to raise money for a governor. They have all kinds of business to hand out, road contracts, construction jobs, you name it.

At a time when we have much work to do to address our Nation's critical infrastructure, and, as I said, which is currently in dire need of upgrade and repair, this legislation is also a jobs bill and is obviously a jobs creator.

The New Deal was a socialist revolution.

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I call the attention of the House to these bridge bills that are coming up .... This bill is typical of the type of bill that should be objected to.

At the end of the day, the only things that are shovel ready around here are the words coming out of Barack Obama and Joe Biden's mouth.

The point about Roosevelt's New Deal was that it was visionary - for the 1930s.

Highway spending, which I think most everybody says is badly needed in this country, creates American jobs, and also makes America more competitive.

Yet we didn't fix anything. Our roads are bad, our bridges are bad, our tunnels are bad, our schools are bad, our hospitals are bad.

Many of the original New Deal programs required heavy manual labor. WPA workers built hundreds of schools, health clinics, roads, park facilities, and community centers. Much of what we now call our 'infrastructure' - highways, buildings, power plants, etc. - is here thanks to thousands of WPA workers.

Promise all that is asked and more if you can think of anything. Offer to build a bridge or a church, to divide a county, create a batch of new offices, make a turnpike, or anything they like. Promises cost nothing, therefore deny nobody who has a vote.

To protect people's lives and keep our children safe, we must implement public-works spending and do so proudly. If possible, I'd like to see the Bank of Japan purchase all of the construction bonds that we need to issue to cover the cost. That would also forcefully circulate money in the market. That would be positive for the economy, too.

To give him his credit, I never thought I'd say this, but Donald Trump was talking about the importance of investing in jobs and infrastructure and in the economies across the country, not just the main cities, and that's right.

Instead of basic roads and bridges, infrastructure spending will go to bloated unions overseeing pie-in-the-sky construction projects like the $30 billion-plus high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which California officials fully expect to be funded.

On infrastructure, there's a potential for Donald Trump to reach out to Democrats. He's talking about infrastructure spending far in excess of what any Republicans would have considered under a Democratic president.

The New Deal is inconsistent with the principles of limited government and with the constitutional provisions designed to secure that end.

Business leaders, labor unions, governors, mayors, congressmen and presidents have all complained about a lack of funding for years, but aside from a one-time cash infusion from the stimulus program, nothing much has changed. There is still no consensus on how to solve the problem or where to get the massive amounts of money needed to fix it, just another example of political paralysis in Washington.

One of Obama's first major acts as president was to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and some of the money in that bill went to Saft.

If your budget is in good shape and you are not indebted too much, you can do what the U.S. did at the beginning of the '30s - building railways, etc., but when you don't have that, you must be far more cautious.