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“VETOING AMERICA'S TRANSPORTATION FUTURE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3240 on May 12, 2005.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
VETOING AMERICA'S TRANSPORTATION FUTURE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, finally, blatantly, 18\1/2\ months after the expiration of the Surface Transportation Act which provides crucial funding for all of the road, bridge, highway mass transit and related work of the Federal Government, spending our gas taxes which are collected day in and day out and being underspent by this administration, the Senate acted to increase funding.
Strangely, this is the one bill, the only place that George Bush in over 5 years in office has said he is going to veto a bill if it spends more money. Now, he will not do that for agriculture subsidies to pay big corporate farms not to pay things. He wanted to cut their subsidies, but the Republicans have refused to do it, and he is not threatening to veto that bill.
He is not threatening to veto bills that are doing wasteful things like the Star Wars Project in Alaska that does not work, has not met a single parameter of its goal. He cannot threaten vetoes there. But when it is spending our gas tax money, this is the only bill where we are in the borrowing money. We are borrowing $1.3 million a minute to run the Federal Government under the Bush budget, but we do not have to borrow money to have a robust highway bill. We just need to spend the taxes we are all paying every time we tank up our car or truck.
This is money that will put people to work. This is money that will maintain and improve our crumbling infrastructure. It will help mitigate congestion, people sitting in traffic, idling, wasting gas, wasting their time. It could better fund mass transit, alternate transportation, all these things; but somehow the President has drawn the line in the sand.
He said last year, not a penny over $256 billion. He wants to underspend the trust fund so he can borrow that money to pay for tax cuts for rich people. Plain and simple. That is what he wants to do with our gas tax money.
We pay money at the pump to improve our roads, bridges, and highways. We have to pay it right there at the pump. He wants to underspend that trust fund, and then he wants to take and divert that money over here to give rich people tax cuts. Now, is that a better way to stimulate the economy of the United States, to improve the business climate, to help the traveling public?
I do not think so. It might help them pay for their corporate jets, but it is not going to help the rest of us who are down there mired in traffic.
So the Senate voted yesterday 76 to 22 to increase funding substantially above the levels the President says he will veto. Well, an override of a veto is 66 votes in the United States Senate. Maybe this will send a message that we have been trying to send to the White House for 2 years.
There is a huge bipartisan coalition, Republican and Democrat in the House and the Senate, who want to invest in our roads, bridges, highways, mass transit, alternative transportation, put Americans to work, help Americans get to work, and help improve the efficiency of our business. Hopefully, they will change their tone down at the White House and stop threatening to veto needed investment.
The President's own Department of Transportation, the people he politically appointed and controls, says this bill should be $376 billion. And the President says not a penny over 256. Now he has come up a little bit to the House level of 284, but that is not adequate to meet the needs of the system. And the Senate wants to spend more of our gas tax dollars on what they were collected for, projects to rebuild and improve the efficiency of the Nation's infrastructure.
So I take this as a very positive move. Hopefully, the Republican leadership can move with dispatch to have a conference committee and get a bill done by May 31. That is when the fifth extension of the long-expired highway bill expires. Because if we do not, hundreds of projects across America will not get built this summer, those jobs will not be created, those bottlenecks will not be solved, those bridges will not be repaired, the traveling public will be impaired.
The White House will be happy with that because then they get to take more money, divert it from the gas tax, and spend it on more tax cuts for rich people. But I do not think the rest of America will be amused by that. So I am hoping the American public will demand that Congress act quickly to resolve the differences between the House and the Senate and get a bill now 18 months overdue to the President's desk. And if he chooses to veto it, then pressure the Congress to override that ill-
intentioned veto.
Let him veto something wasteful. Let him veto something that we are borrowing money to pay for, but do not veto a paid-for highway bill with vital investment in America's transportation future.
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