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“MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON H.R. 4348, SURFACE TRANSPORTATION EXTENSION ACT OF 2012, PART II” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3788-H3794 on June 19, 2012.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON H.R. 4348, SURFACE TRANSPORTATION
EXTENSION ACT OF 2012, PART II
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I have a previous noticed motion at the desk.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
The Clerk read as follows:
Mr. Walz of Minnesota moves that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 4348 be instructed to resolve all issues and file a conference report not later than June 22, 2012.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 7 of rule XXII, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Walz) and the gentleman from Tennessee
(Mr. Duncan) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Minnesota.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I want to thank the gentleman from Tennessee for being here. I know his commitment to building infrastructure in this Nation is unquestioned. He's been a good friend and a gentleman on the committee.
I think what we're here for today, Mr. Speaker, is the American people deserve better from us. We have a need in this country that is obvious to everyone. The infrastructure in this country is crumbling: 70,000 deficient bridges; nearly half our highways in disrepair. And being a Member from Minnesota, that hot August day almost 5 years ago when the I 35W bridge fell into the Mississippi River is a stark testament of what we can do.
The Transportation Committee, by command of the Constitution, if you will, has always been there to build the post roads. This Nation has built canals, locks, dams, and ports. We've built railroads that connected the continent and spurred the industrial revolution. We've built an interstate highway system that made the American economy the envy of the world. We have possessed vision, we've possessed willpower, and we've done it in a manner that incorporated bipartisan support and, at the end of the day, compromise.
The last bill that passed, SAFETEA-LU, passed by a vote in this House in 2005 of 412 8; in the Senate, 91 4. The previous bill, 2007, 297 86, and 88 5 in the Senate. In 1991, 372 47; the Senate, 79 8. In 1987, over the last 25 years, 350 73. We have the will. We simply need to exercise the political willpower to move this piece of legislation.
So this motion to instruct is very simple. A hundred days ago, the Senate passed their version. It received a vote of 74 22. It is a bipartisan bill.
Now, I will be the first to tell you the prerogative of the House to lead is sacred to us here. We need to have a say in this. We need to make sure that the people's House has their voice in things. The problem we have is we've been sitting in conference committee for 45 days with a deadlock and no end in sight.
So this motion to instruct, yes, it's a nonbinding sense of the House, but I would argue it's far more than that. This is a sense of the American public. They sent us here to do some basic work. They did not send us here to agree with each other on everything, but they did have that understanding that the glue that binds the Nation together is compromise. And there are a very few things that historically have been bipartisan. The transportation bill has been one of those.
So what this MTI asks is: rectify the differences and compromise to the point that we can get something on the floor and finish the work by June 22, this Friday. Then give us the opportunity to exercise the American will by having their Representatives discuss what needs to be there. If we can't come to a compromise, bring us the Senate bill and let's have the up-or-down vote. If it passes, we can move forward. If it doesn't, then we start and go on from there. But I have to tell you, we can't afford to kick this can down the road--and I would say the proverbial ``crumbling road.''
The Chamber of Commerce has made the case:
Failure to keep up with infrastructure needs in the U.S. cost this economy $2 trillion between 2008 and 2009.
Every year we do nothing, we spend over $100 billion on idling tax. We waste 1.9 billion gallons of fuel yearly. That's 5 percent of our fuel needs. That's money going to foreign countries who hate us. They'll hate us for free. We can be more efficient. We cannot waste Americans' hard-earned dollars staring at the bumper in front of them. We can do it safely, and we can move our products to market faster; and we have that power.
I said it this morning. I'll continue to say it. Up above the Speaker's chair up there is the quote from Daniel Webster. How about we do something worthy to be remembered for. How about we come together and pass a bill that the people say, They did the peoples' work. They compromised.
It's not about getting what each of us wants. It's about getting what the American public needs.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the kind words from the gentleman from Minnesota. He is correct in that I am very much committed to trying to produce and pass a good transportation bill in this Congress. When the gentleman's party was in control of the House and the Senate and the White House a couple of years ago, they couldn't, for various reasons, pass the bill. And I certainly hope we can in this Congress.
For the past 3\1/2\ years, about half the time when I've come to the floor I've had some Members on both sides come up to me and say, When are we going to pass a highway bill? And this is my 24th year in this body and I have been involved actively with all of those bills that the gentleman from Minnesota mentioned, all of which passed by overwhelming margins. And as he said, the last highway bill that was passed in 2005 passed with only 8 votes in opposition.
I agree and I think all of the people on our side of the aisle agree in principle with Mr. Walz's motion to instruct. We should focus our efforts on completing the conference report and delivering a bill to the President's desk before the surface transportation programs expire at the end of this month. Unfortunately, up until this moment, the Senate has not shown a sufficient willingness to address the House's top four priorities: streamlining project delivery; program consolidation; State funding flexibility; and equitable funding formulas not based on past earmarks.
When the average transportation project, Mr. Speaker, takes 15 years to complete, I cannot help but think there's something wrong with the current system. And as the gentleman from Minnesota mentioned, when the will is there, these projects can be completed in record time, such as the I 35 bridge in Minnesota after it collapsed.
Bureaucratic red tape is the main culprit, and much more must be done in the reauthorization bill to accelerate the process by which projects are approved. Every other developed nation is doing similar types of projects in a third or half the time that we are, and it is ridiculous that we are wasting so much money dragging these projects out for so many years. We can accomplish the goal of accelerating the process without harming the environment, but the Senate so far has shown more interest in catering to radical environmentalists than building infrastructure projects.
Program consolidation is another important reform that the House is pushing for in this bill. The Senate insists on including two new programs at the cost of $3 billion a year that would allow the administration to play politics with the funding that should go directly to the States. At a time when the highway trust fund is going broke, we should focus our limited transportation dollars on consolidating programs and eliminating wasteful programs, not creating new ones. Funding flexibility for the States is critical to allowing the States to fund the most economically significant highway and bridge projects.
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The Federal Government should not mandate that States spend their limited Federal aid funding on flower plantings and transportation museums and other questionable projects, while State budgets are squeezed to the breaking point. States need to be given flexibility. Some States need to spend more on bridge replacement. Some States need to spend more on crumbling highways. Some States have done more already on highway beautification and other enhancement-type projects and don't need to spend so much in that area as possibly some other States. States need to be given flexibility.
Most States have a backlog of crumbling bridges and highways needing to be rehabilitated. Why not allow them to focus their limited resources on the greatest needs in their State? The needs vary from State to State.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, the funding formula for how Federal highway funding is distributed to States is based in part at least on the number of earmarks the States received in the last reauthorization bill. Funding formulas should be based on the most equitable factors that are part of a State's transportation system, not which Member of Congress fared the best in the last go around.
I hope these reasonable issues can be resolved before the end of the week.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend allowing me to speak on this.
There is no one I have more respect for than my good friend from Tennessee. I had a great time working with him on a variety of things when I was on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. But with all due respect, I think the issue here is what we're going to do to renew and rebuild America.
For the first time in history, our Republican friends gave us a partisan transportation reauthorization. Never before have we seen anything like this offered up. There wasn't even a hearing before the full committee before it was advanced. It went right to work session. There was no effort to involve people on the other side of the aisle. We were given a piece of legislation that attacked transit, that scaled down funding, that was against the most popular programs, the ones that have the greatest local involvement, the enhancements. It was an environmental catastrophe. It was so bad that my Republican colleagues couldn't even bring their bill to the floor. They withdrew it. And so we had the ninth extension.
We have been given a bill in the other body that, as my good friend from Minnesota pointed out, received 74 votes. It will give us two complete construction cycles. It does, in fact, accelerate environmental processes. There is a compromise, a bipartisan compromise, on the previous contentious area of enhancements. It is a reasonable way for us to go forward.
Mr. Speaker, in contrast to this, we have a Republican budget that will not even fund the current obligations. It will cut out entirely the ability to move forward with any new Federal partnership for infrastructure.
I think the motion to instruct is a modest step forward. I respectfully suggest that what we ought to do is not just approve the motion to instruct; we ought to approve the Senate bill and get on with business.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman for his leadership on transportation issues, and with that, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), a leading member of our committee.
Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in support of the motion to instruct.
Passing a transportation bill is about jobs. It's about keeping America competitive in the world. So I, for one, am urging a ``yes'' vote on this motion to instruct. I believe it is critical to America that we pass a transportation bill.
I would like to correct a few facts that my good friend from Oregon just put forward. The gentleman to my recollection has been on the Ways and Means Committee for the past couple of years, 4 years I believe it has been, so I don't know how privy he was to what we did in the House Transportation Committee to try to be inclusive to our Democratic colleagues, to work with them. We worked with them as openly, if not more openly, than Chairman Oberstar when he chaired the committee. We did have a full committee hearing on it. In fact, we had 18 hours of debate. And as I recall, when Chairman Oberstar chaired the committee, we had zero hours of debate in the full committee because a bill from the Democratic-controlled House didn't even make it to the full committee. So we worked hard and we talked with our colleagues. Unfortunately, being bipartisan is not just one party saying that they can't work with another party. It takes two of us to tango. We did in the last bill. I wasn't happy with much of Chairman Oberstar's bill, but to move a bill forward, we said okay, we're with you, we'll move the bill. Our Democratic colleagues chose to make it a partisan fight by not getting together with us.
But I applaud my friend from Minnesota with this motion to instruct. We need to move forward. What we have been negotiating in the Senate, really five provisions on our streamlining that are extremely important--eliminating duplication, where you have a State that's environmental review process is as strong or stronger than the Federal review process, that should take the place. It should substitute for the Federal review process. The number one example of that is California. California is far stricter on environmental reviews than the EPA is. So why don't we allow California to move forward rather than having to go through a NEPA review at the Federal level?
Hard deadlines; concurrent rather than consecutive reviews with hard deadlines. We've been talking with the Senate for the past couple of months about this, but they insist upon having safety valves. What does safety valves mean? That means that an agency can go to the Secretary of Transportation and ask for a waiver and say they need more time. That's not going to help to streamline this process because we know what will happen: it'll continue to prolong these review processes.
Funding thresholds for a NEPA review. If a project receives de minimis amounts of Federal funding, it should not be subject to a Federal NEPA review but should go through the same regulations as a State project. And we've already moved on this. We sent a counteroffer to the Senate moving on our position. So in good faith, that's what we've been doing in the House.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Culberson). The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.
Mr. SHUSTER. Categorical exclusions in rights of way. If you're going to replace a bridge in the same footprint, we shouldn't have to go through these endless, long environmental reviews. We should be able to build that quickly and efficiently. In fact, my colleague from Oregon, who is the ranking member on the Highway Subcommittee, has suggested that there is some common ground there. In fact, I quote him, he said, and it had to do with putting streetcars back on the streets:
We're going to have fewer cars on the road, why should we spend a lot of time and money studying it?
And I agree with him.
And finally, when there's a disaster, to eliminate or to reduce significantly these reviews they have to go through, just as in the case of I 35, as was mentioned earlier, to be able to build that bridge in a much more efficient, faster time to get it up and running.
I support the gentleman's motion to instruct, and I stand ready as a Republican on the conference committee to put a bill forward that we can pass here, and I would urge all of my colleagues in the House to support this motion to instruct.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. He's a good friend and colleague and an honest broker on things.
I agree with the gentleman on the categorically excluded bridges; 96 percent are now. So we can decide now, do we want to bog down on that last 4 percent, or do we want to get a bill forward? I think there's agreement here. I think we're in a clear-cut case of if the perfect gets in the way of the good, the American public pays for that. But I appreciate his support on this and his desire to get a bill done. And I think it's been obvious that he wants this transportation bill done, so I thank the gentleman.
With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
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Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding time.
Since the founding of our Nation, there has been bipartisan agreement on the need for the Federal Government to play a strong role in interconnecting the States of our country. It was George Washington who said:
The only binding cement, and no otherwise to be effected but by opening such communications as will make it easier and cheaper for them to bring the product of their labor to our markets.
And that's relevant today, I'll address that in a moment.
The second quote which is relevant to the dispute today is:
We are either united people under one head for Federal purposes, or we are 13 independent sovereign entities eternally counteracting each other.
This is the need--and the gentleman knows this photo well. There are more than 70,000 bridges that are structurally deficient in this country, load limited; there are another 70,000 or so that are functionally obsolete or need substantial repair--150,000 bridges. Forty percent of the pavement on the National Highway System doesn't just need an overlay; it needs to be dug up; it needs underlayment and restructuring. And a $70 billion backlog on our transit systems.
We are actually killing people because we aren't investing in our infrastructure, let alone losing the opportunities for millions of jobs and economic competitiveness and more fuel efficiency.
People died right here in Washington, D.C., on the Metro because they're running cars that don't work anymore in the middle of trains, surrounded by cars that are supposed to work and help the ones that don't work.
People died here because this bridge collapsed.
We need to make these investments. With the Made In America requirements in the transportation portions of our government--which are the strongest and we hope to make even stronger in this bill, working with the Republican side of the aisle here--we could put millions to work, not just construction workers who certainly need the jobs, but also small businesses that supply, fabrication firms, manufacturing firms, steel manufacturers, and others across the board would be put to work rebuilding our infrastructure.
What's the problem?
Here's the problem: The second thing that George Washington talked about, saying that we're either united or we're going to be internally counteracting one another. There are, unfortunately, a substantial number of Republicans in their conference who have blocked movement on a bill because they don't believe, unlike George Washington, that the Federal Government has a role to play in coordinating a national transportation system. They want to devolve to the States. They want to go back to the good old days before Dwight David Eisenhower brought us into the modern era with the National Highway System. Here's the good old days. That's the brand-spanking-new Kansas turnpike--oops, it ends in Amos Schweizer's field. That's the Oklahoma State line.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman.
Mr. DeFAZIO. That's the Oklahoma State line.
Oklahoma had promised to build their section, but they couldn't because they had a funding dispute. And they didn't--until the Eisenhower bill passed and we had Federal aid to help Oklahoma build their section.
Now, we should go back to those good old days?
But there are some 85-odd members of the Republican Conference who are opposing a well-funded, longer term bill because this is their belief: These were better days for the United States of America.
Well, I'll tell you what. We could do a bill, and we could do a bill that does accommodate some of the concerns on the Republican side of the aisle with a serious conference over the next few days, with a will just to get it done, put America back to work, and rebuild our infrastructure. And you're going to have to have, unfortunately, because of your devolutionists, some Democratic votes to pass it.
Let's go back to the days of Denny Hastert: A majority of the majority need to vote for a bill, but it doesn't have to be passed only with Republican votes. We're not going to ever get a bill done if it's done on a partisan basis.
Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Southerland), a very active member of our committee.
Mr. SOUTHERLAND. I'd like to thank the gentleman from Tennessee for yielding time.
As a new Member of this body, it was quite an honor to be appointed a conferee to go to conference. Those who are a part of this body recognize that, that it's usually something that obviously senior Members are appointed to. It was a great honor and it still is, even though we have yet to have a product that we can vote upon.
You can imagine my disappointment when, after attending five working group meetings, I did not have a single individual to look at on the other side of the table representing the other body. You see, when the American people sent us here, I believe they sent us here to change the way we do business. And I'm pleased that we were sent to be involved in those five meetings.
I keep hearing oftentimes in the media, Mr. Speaker, that it is the Republican side that isn't perhaps interested in a bill. But I would say, if that were true, then why did I attend five working group meetings only to have no counterpart on the other side of the table?
We recognize not just words; we recognize actions.
I think the American people are so tired of words. I think that they would be terribly disappointed if they knew that their elected Members did not even attend meetings. And if they did not attend these working group meetings, then how could they be serious and expecting us to believe that they're interested in a bill? I think that we trample on their trust when we don't do the people's work. It's terribly, terribly disappointing.
I want the reforms. I believe they're important. I believe that if we can build a bridge like I 35 through Minnesota, if we can rebuild it in 437 days, I think it makes sense to include streamlining provisions in this bill that say that every project around the country is just as important as I 35, and so, therefore, we need to build all bridges back to their original state without having to go through long, laborious, expensive environmental impact studies if we're rebuilding that bridge back or repaving that road back on the original footprint. I think that makes sense.
I think the American people want us to do their work. They want us to create a bill of value and a bill that is paid for. I think that what we have voted upon and the reforms that we have asked to be considered, not only have they not been answered or even addressed, but we haven't even had the opportunity to even look at one of our counterparts on the other side of the aisle and speak to them at conference. It's terribly disappointing.
With that, I rise in support of this motion to instruct because I believe that we need to have Members come and we need to debate and we need to do the people's business.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman for his support.
At this time, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to a senior member of the Transportation Committee, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).
Mr. BISHOP of New York. I thank my friend from Minnesota for yielding.
I rise in support of the motion to instruct conferees.
Let me start by just making clear that this issue of categorical exclusion is one that's important for us to all recognize. The 35W bridge, the rebuild was subject to a categorical exclusion, so it was not held up.
Again, I will repeat what my friend from Minnesota said: 96 percent of the projects that go forward with highway bill funding are subject to a categorical exclusion. We really have to ask ourselves if we are going to continue to allow unemployment in the construction industry at 35 percent for 4 percent of the projects that are constructed under the highway bill.
This motion would direct conferees to adopt a final conference report no later than this Friday, June 22. In fact, June 22 represents the 100th day since the Senate passed MAP 21 with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 74 22. It's fully paid for, and it will save or create an estimated 3 million jobs. In fact, in my State alone, at least 115,000 jobs will be saved or created if we can get either a successful conference report or the passage of MAP 21.
It's been 126 days since the House Rules Committee began considering H.R. 7 for floor consideration, which faltered soon thereafter when my Republican colleagues could not gain consensus within their own caucus and the bill died. It's now been 62 days since the House passed a shell bill to allow conference negotiations to begin.
Finally, and most importantly, we are a mere 6 legislative days away from the expiration of our highway programs when the current 90-day extension expires on June 30.
During this entire time, one fact has been a constant: that the men and women of our construction industry continue to suffer with one of the highest rates of unemployment for any industry. We continue the lack of certainty that a multiyear highway bill would provide. It would provide States the ability to plan and initiate projects, to put people back to work and begin the much-needed improvements to our roadways, bridges, and transit systems desperately needed.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.
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Mr. BISHOP of New York. I applaud my Senate colleagues who put aside partisan politics to advance a bipartisan bill. To their credit, the Senate put forward that which they could agree on and set aside to a later date that on which they could not agree. It was a sensible and successful strategy.
With Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, House Democrats and the White House all supporting MAP 21, it is clear that if we can just get the House Republicans on board we can get a bill, and that's what we need to do. We can get a bill, because a temporary extension--yet another--is not a strategy that works. A temporary extension is not the answer. We will soon exhaust the trust fund, States and municipalities will not have the certainty they need to plan, thus construction companies will not be able to hire, and we will lose yet another construction season.
A temporary extension is not the answer. Passing a conference report by June 30, or passing MAP 21, is the answer.
Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford), who has been one of our lead negotiators on trying to come up with a transportation bill in our conference.
Mr. LANKFORD. I thank my colleague from Tennessee.
It is interesting for me to be able to hear the indignation and saying we've got to get this bill done. It's important that it gets resolved, and I would have to say I completely agree with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
This is a very important bill. Every person who gets in a vehicle, gets in a bus, gets in a truck, or has any piece or item in their home that's delivered by truck, train, whatever it may be, is affected by this. So it's very important.
But just a quick history lesson. When I arrived here in January of last year, we were on extension No. 6 because the previous highway bill expired in 2009. And when Democrats had the House and the Senate, and the Presidency, and they loaded their bill up with earmarks to get it passed, they did not get a bill passed.
So it's interesting to hear the conversation about, well, if Republicans in the House could get this resolved, then we'd get this settled, when, in reality, there are a lot of technical details that better be right that even when Democrats had the House, the Senate, and the Presidency for 2 years could not get this bill done, even with all the earmarks.
This is a different day. We're trying to work together between the House and the Senate. One body doesn't pass a bill and the other body just says, I'll tell you what, you passed it; we'll just go ahead and do that. If so, I would love for the Senate to take up many of the bills that we passed in the House and just have the Senate go ahead and pass those. But this has to be a bicameral agreement.
We're not going to do this with earmarks. That's a big difference. In the past, these bills had thousands upon thousands of earmarks, and we have determined no more, we're not going to do it that way. We have to live within the budget, and we have to be able to help a few things work a lot better than they have in the past.
Major highways right now take about 15 years in construction. We think that's way too long. The first 7 years of that is just in permitting and process and this repetitive process that we have with the Federal Government with this linear permitting. We just want to be able to stack those permits up, allow people to be able to take the first step on it, still have all the same environmental reviews, but do it in a way that's faster and is more streamlined. It saves time. It saves money. It actually builds those roads a lot faster than waiting all of this time.
I can tell you, many people in Oklahoma stare at the engineering work on both sides of the road and hear about new construction that's happening, but they hear about it and hear about it and hear about it and hear about it before the dirt ever gets turned. We want to try to get these road projects started and completed.
We want to allow road money to actually be used for roads. Now, I know that's a crazy idea, but we'd like highway money to be used for highways. We'd like to stay within budget, and we'd like the States to be able to have the flexibility to spend their money, remembering it's their money, not Washington, D.C.'s money.
That 18.4 cents that came out of that State is going back into that State in gas tax. We want the individuals that actually paid that gas tax to be able to help resolve how that's going to best be used.
If they have bridges that are coming down, let's fix bridges.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. I thank the gentleman from Minnesota and the manager, and my friends on the other side of the aisle.
This is an important, crucial motion to instruct. Crucial is the word. And I thank the gentleman for recognizing that while we are here, others are languishing, bridges are languishing, highways are languishing, ports, and even our mass transit concerns are languishing because we have not moved forward. One, two, three, four, five--I think we're up to five extensions the last 5 to 7 years, if my counting is correct.
But most importantly, let me congratulate Members from both sides of the aisle that have come forward to support the gentleman's motion to instruct, which evidences how crucial this motion is and how we need to move beyond the many, many conference calls that I know that those conferees who are in are getting from so many interest groups, and indicate that we need to move forward and bring a report forward that will not stop us from continuing to negotiate on some of the many sidebar issues.
But as we languish, we're losing jobs. As we languish, Americans are unemployed. As we languish, bridges continue to crumble.
I remember our good friend, Chairman Oberstar, who taught us a few years ago that if you pass a transportation and infrastructure bill, you put America back to work. Tragically, as he was speaking some years ago, tragically one of his own bridges in that area had a very devastating impact in the fracturing of that bridge.
We don't want to see that anymore. We want to be able to see people going to work. And so I simply would ask that this motion to instruct be followed. Bring to the floor in a conference report not later than June 22, 2012, the ability to pass this legislation.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.
Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Bring to the floor this conference report, put to work people in Texas, fix bridges and put to work people in Minnesota, Virginia, New York, across the Nation, south, north, east and west, and begin to solve separate difficult problems, if I might say, on the side.
I want to see our workers working, many of our friends in the IBEW and building trades and many other supporting unions for the machinists and others, working. I believe this is a bipartisan message. Let's do it now.
Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Cravaack), a very important member of our conference.
Mr. CRAVAACK. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I couldn't agree more with my colleague from Minnesota, and I rise in support of his motion to instruct. We will continue to stand ready to negotiate with the Senate.
As a conferee, I have partaken in some of these meetings myself and have negotiated in good faith with Senate staff. Unfortunately, no Senators.
The highway trust fund is bankrupt, and the Federal highway program is in need of serious reform. Congressman Walz is quite correct in that we cannot continue to kick this can down the road. And I will say the conferee House positions are fair and practical.
Allowing States the flexibility in order to address their specific transportation needs just makes sense. We have a $15.7 trillion debt; 46 percent of our debt is foreign owned, 30 percent owned by one country, China. We do not have the luxury, as the Senate bill requires, to spend money on things like wildflowers and, at the same time, the trust fund is bankrupt.
And as Mr. Walz and Mr. DeFazio point out, bridges are in disrepair and roads are crumbling. We need to get our priorities in order.
The House bill consolidates and eliminates programs, as opposed to creating $3 billion a year and increasing new programs like the Senate bill. This is not extreme; it's fiscally responsible.
The 293 bipartisan House Members voted to approve the Keystone pipeline, a fair and practical approach to helping lower gas prices at the pump and creating tens of thousands of jobs without hurting the environment.
Finally, the House positions of streamlining and significantly reducing the time it takes, without harming the environment, to build a major road project in this country is a practicable position; 15 years to permit, design, and build is not.
The Senate steadfastly refuses to cut any bureaucratic red tape that is associated with building a highway or bridge. We need to stop good-
paying construction jobs from being endlessly tied up.
If the Senate is serious, as we are, to get this done early next week, I hope that they engage in good faith in a bicameral fashion.
I thank my colleague from Minnesota again for bringing this up. This is a very important position, I support his motion to instruct, and I urge my colleagues to do so as well.
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Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman for his support.
At this time, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, the House Republicans are doing nothing short of sabotaging our economy and jeopardizing millions of jobs by refusing to pass a long-term, well-funded transportation bill like the bipartisan Senate bill. There were 74 Senators, including 22 Republicans, who voted in favor of S. 1813, MAP 21. At one point, Speaker of the House John Boehner expressed his support for the bipartisan Senate bill. It is time for us to pass that legislation.
The unemployment rate in the construction industry remains nearly triple the national average. Construction workers, engineers, architects, managers, contractors, and developers tell me that another short-term extension will not bring enough certainty to the industry. In Illinois, my State, the failure to pass a long-term transportation extension at the peak of the construction season has kept many unemployed and put thousands of other jobs at risk. Our States, our localities, our businessowners, and our workers deserve better.
MAP 21 is the single largest jobs bill passed by either body in this 112th Congress. In my home State of Illinois alone, MAP 21 will save or create 70,000 jobs. Nationwide, the bill will save or create nearly 2 million jobs and spur 1 million additional jobs through the leveraging of transit funds.
I am a strong supporter of MAP 21, and we should send it to the President's desk this week. I can't support and our workers can't support another short-term extension that will leave thousands of Illinois jobs hanging in the balance. We need to move forward with legislation that does more than kick the can down the road.
Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana, Dr. Bucshon, who has been a lead negotiator on our conference committee for the Republican side.
Mr. BUCSHON. I would like to thank Mr. Walz for bringing this to the floor. I believe that we all can agree we must pass a long-term highway bill.
In my home State of Indiana, Interstate 69 is being constructed through my district, connecting my district to our State's capital. When I return home every weekend, I see how important Federal dollars are to the construction industry and how necessary infrastructure is to the economic development of our cities and towns.
As a member of the conference committee for the highway bill, I have personally been involved in this process. My House colleagues and I have attended several negotiation sessions and have discussed this legislation at length with the Senate staff. I wish our friends in the Senate were as involved in the process, because we could have resolved many of these issues weeks ago.
I think my friends on the other side of the aisle here in the House seem to forget that we don't just rubberstamp Senate bills and that they don't rubberstamp ours. If that were the case, they'd take up the 30 House-passed job-creating bills that we've sent over to them in the last year.
Nobody is more committed to this legislation than Members of the House on the Republican side. We want to streamline the project delivery process, eliminate duplicative programs, give more power back to the States, and stretch our limited dollars further. These are proposals that every Member of this body should support. We need a long-term reauthorization that will provide certainty to our Nation's job creators.
I support this motion, and I look forward to the completion of this conference.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman for his support and for his work on this.
At this time, I would like to yield 3 minutes to my friend and colleague from California (Mr. Garamendi).
Mr. GARAMENDI. I want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota for yielding time for me to discuss this.
During this approximately 1 hour of debate, it pays to listen to what has actually been said. What has been said by my Republican colleagues is: It's our way or no highway. We're going to have our way or no highway.
What is their way? What is it that the Republicans are demanding? Get past the nice rhetoric, and look at the detail underlying the words: eliminate duplication. What does that mean? Well, it basically means eliminating the environmental laws. Oh, we don't need them. The States can take care of it.
I think not.
They want to focus on highways. Well, we all do; but what does that mean? It means that they want to eliminate the public transportation portion of this legislation. Okay. So no buses, no trains, no light rail funding. Get into the details about what is actually being demanded by our Republican colleagues, and you begin to say, Well, wait a minute. I think we can understand why there has not been progress here.
We need to really move forward. Some 60,000 construction workers have lost their jobs in the last 5 months. As our Republican colleagues have laid out their demands, which they have essentially said are nonnegotiable--their way or no highway--they're holding this country hostage. They're holding the construction industry hostage so that they can have their way. Understand what their way means: no public transportation programs. Oh, we'll repair bridges and we'll do highways--and that's good--but there's more to it than this: no bike paths, no safety for men and women who are walking along our highways.
That's their way. That's not what America's way needs to be.
We need to pass a bill. Two million people want to go to work. Yes, they agree with Mr. Walz' proposal, which is to get this thing done. What they're really saying is: Get it done our way or there will be no highway. The Senate has passed a bill, and 74 Democrats and Republicans agreed to it. Let's get it done.
If you can get it your way in the next 3 days, fine. Otherwise, give us the Senate bill, and let's put men and women to work here in this country. We cannot afford any more layoffs in the construction industry. We can no longer afford to wait. A 2-year bill is essential.
Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I have no additional speakers on our side, so I will close by saying just a couple of things.
The last highway bill that passed with only eight dissenting votes, which has been mentioned here a couple of times tonight, was passed when the Republicans were in control of the Congress. I think that shows very clearly that the overwhelming majority of Republicans in the Congress supports highway bills and that we want to do one this year.
One of the main sticking points for us, one of the problems, is that in my almost quarter century in this body we've been talking about giving lip service to environmental streamlining all through those years, but we really never have accomplished anything. You've heard it said several times tonight that the Federal Highway Administration says the average highway project--and these are not transcontinental roads--
takes 15 years to build when all of these other developed nations are doing these projects in a third or in half the time that we are. We have got to do more with less during this time of budgetary constraints. We want to do these things because these are jobs that can't be outsourced to foreign countries. They are jobs that will be done here. They're important to this economy.
The Republicans believe that there is an important and legitimate role for the Federal Government in transportation projects. People in California use the airports in Texas and vice versa. People in New York sometimes drink the water in Florida and vice versa. People in Ohio sometimes drive on the highways in Tennessee and vice versa. All people benefit from lower prices when our ports operate efficiently.
All of the things that we deal with on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Republicans believe in, and they want to see a good, legitimate--but not dictatorial--Federal role in those projects. We believe that the role of the States is very important, and we believe that the role of the local governments and the local people should be paramount because they know the needs of their States and of their localities better than almost anyone.
We are supportive of the gentleman from Minnesota, and we are supportive of his motion to instruct because our goal is the same as his in that we want to produce a good, conservative, reasonable transportation bill for this Nation, and we want to do it sooner rather than later.
{time} 1840
We would like to do it within the next few days. Before we can do that--the other body does not control this process. They have to take into consideration what the House wants as well. That's what we're talking about.
With that, I support the motion to instruct by the gentleman from Minnesota, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, again, I would like to thank the gentleman from Tennessee, a leader on this. He has the institutional experience and knowledge and is always gracious. I would have to say you're going to find a lot of agreement from me on this. I certainly think that is the case.
The American public deserves better. I think they deserve a debate like they're seeing tonight. They see a sense of respect that goes back and forth. Frustrations get high in this House, but I keep thinking back to the immeasurable sacrifices that went into self-governances. It would be a lot easier--I had a gentleman one time tell me that there's too many Members of Congress; we should cut the numbers in half. I said, Why think so small? Get rid of all of us and just name a king, and then you don't have to worry about this messy democracy.
That's not what Americans do. We understand that there's 435 good opinions here, differences, strong opinions for the right things about this country, but we disagree on how some of those things should get done. At the end of the day, those differences are a strength if we can get the glue that holds us together as a Nation in a compromise. I will be the first to say that I certainly don't want to see this House capitulate its responsibility, but I also understand that at times there are certain realities of what can move and what cannot. I think deadlines like this motion to instruct puts in makes that deadline solid and it asks what can we give.
Many of the provisions my colleagues were talking about, whether it is Keystone pipeline--I am personally supportive of that. If it's in here, I think that's a good thing. But I understand that a lot of my colleagues don't, and there's no way the Senate does that. The American people have elected us. They've elected a Senate that doesn't agree with that. So at the end of the day, I have to make a choice and all of us do. Is it worth holding up a highway bill over a piece of legislation that I personally like but don't believe that it outpaces the point of getting these roads built?
I think the public wants to see us do that. I certainly am willing to compromise, as my friend from Tennessee has always proven to me, to try and get it right. And I think the public wants us to stand by our principles of trying to get it there. But at the end of the day, something has to be done, something has to move forward. The country depends on a workable infrastructure.
I can't tell you, in watching this happen, of seeing how important moving those products is when the I 35W bridge was in the river, not just in terms of the loss of life, the tragedy that happened there, but the disruptions that happened also, that sprung out and rippled into the economy. I think all of us understand that tragic incident, that we don't want to see it replicated, and we also know that smart investments prevent it from happening.
Mr. Speaker, I am appreciative of the Members who came and spoke passionately tonight. I'm appreciative of the folks who understand that this deliberative body has to come to some type of resolution. I would urge my colleagues to support this motion to instruct, simply asking us to do the work we were sent here to do, get it done on time, and get America working and moving again.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, earlier today, the Appropriations Committee voted to report the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill to the full House. This bill makes an insufficient investment in our national transportation system in part because the Committee had to insert placeholder language for several important transportation provisions, notably the Federal highway system and transit programs, due to the lack of an agreement on long-term funding.
The House Republicans' inability to work in a bipartisan manner to reach a compromise on surface transportation reauthorization conference committee negotiations is preventing us from fully investing in our Nation's transportation systems to put people back to work and grow our economy.
For every $1 billion of infrastructure investment, we create at least 30,000 jobs and generate more than $6 billion worth of economic activity that reverberates throughout our economy, improving our national competitiveness and spurring job creation for years to come.
With the national construction unemployment around 14 percent and upwards of 40 percent in my area in recent years, workers need and want to get back on the job.
Despite being a priority for the Department of Transportation, the Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement project in my district is stalled because the current Federal financing pipeline is too small.
I join Mr. Walz in urging the conferees to file a conference report so that we can get on with our work to make the vital investments in our national infrastructure system.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion to instruct.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings on this question will be postponed.
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