“If a city needs tree planting and that brings real jobs and it puts people and their trucks and their trees and their nurserymen to work, and if it provides shade, and it provides greenness, and if it absorbs carbon, and if it engages in traffic calming, there are all sorts of good reasons why people would want to do that."
-Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island on the Senate floor, opposing an amendment sponsored by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to prohibit stimulus money from being used to fund zoos aquariums or beautification projects.