My earmarks are pretty important to building an economy in that region, ... What's good about the highway bill ... is it creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. It is an economic engine that drives the economy.

Our members want us to continue, the speaker wants us to continue to negotiate, and so does the Senate, so we're going to continue to negotiate and see if we can get a bill in December,

We'll always listen to what the president has to say, but we have a bill that has already passed the House; the Senate is working on passing it. ... We have to move forward.

We're close -- very close, ... Hopefully we'll have the bill tonight or tomorrow.

The outlook is not very good, ... Even if the bill is passed, it wouldn't stop these shootings.