PROVO — In a luncheon Monday at the Provo Marriott, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch pontificated on some of the hot-button national political issues currently making headlines that possess the potential to affect Utahns.

Although Hatch touched on topics ranging from nuclear waste disposal to dietary supplements in the hour-plus session where he addressed the audience and fielded questions, one common thread ran throughout all of Hatch's comments: The 71-year-old senator is already gearing up for next year's election in hopes of landing a sixth term in the U.S. Senate. Accordingly, Monday found Hatch's political rhetoric polished and in fine form. The luncheon was sponsored by Capitol Community Bank.

The issue foremost on the senator's mind was transportation. Hatch reported that a highway reorganization bill signed into law last week will appropriate $1.8 billion to Utah over a five-year period.

"We cannot underestimate the value of a strong infrastructure in our state's success," Hatch said. "Highways and bridges are the longest-lived investments that governments can put up. . . . Our quality of life depends on what we do to keep our highways up and running."

Some of those federal funds will be divvied up among commuter rail construction ($200 million), widening Geneva Road in Utah County ($18 million), constructing a west-side corridor from I-15 to the Provo Airport ($6 million), and widening portions of Redwood Road in areas around Bangerter Highway ($8.5 million), Hatch said.

He targeted the Sierra Club for its involvement in stalling the Legacy Highway construction in Davis County, calling the environmental-rights group "the perennial litigator that causes countless problems." Hatch deemed the Sierra Club's lawsuits against the state of Utah over Legacy Highway as "outrageous extortion."

Hatch didn't shy away from the chance to take credit for his contributions to the most recent energy bill.

"I was also on the Energy Bill conference committee," Hatch said. "There are five Hatch major bills in the Energy Bill.

"Now you hear it from the liberal media, that that's a big bill, this bill with pork. But the five that I put into the bill, those five are our future. They make a difference for everybody in Utah."

The provisions Hatch inserted into the bill included environment-friendly incentives to encourage increased harvesting of petroleum from tar sands in eastern Utah, geothermal energy production, development of new oil refineries, and development of alternative fuels.

Hatch bristled at liberal criticism of his credibility in advocating environmental reforms.

"People ask," Hatch said, "'Why weren't you for the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standard increases?' Because the idiotic liberals back there always made them so high that they were impossible to reach.