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“NEW LEGISLATIVE PROCESS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H530 on Jan. 27, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
NEW LEGISLATIVE PROCESS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, we are hearing a lot here on Capitol Hill about Otto von Bismarck's old sausage metaphor, that one doesn't want to watch either sausage or legislation being made. Well, for too long, Madam Speaker, the legislative process in this House was a scene right out of Upton Sinclair's graphic novel, ``The Jungle.''
But currently with a new Congress and new Administration I would say that it has been a breath of fresh air watching this legislative process. It has been open. The ingredients have been great. The legislative leadership, the new President and his administrative team, have been involved, talking with people in both parties, in both chambers, and we are moving towards a package that I think people ought to embrace enthusiastically.
The economic stimulus is moving into stage II, almost the home stretch. We are putting down positions, principles and guidelines. Any timetable at this juncture is perhaps artificial in nature. The target figure of $825 billion or $800 billion or $850 billion is a little arbitrary and subject to amendment, to adjustment. Such parameters are useful, maybe necessary. They are not set in stone, and it is necessary that we do this right. What we can agree upon is to make the economic impact as soon as possible while we help rebuild and renew America to make it better.
I am concerned as the process moves forward, particularly as it relates to the infrastructure portion, that we make sure that the money gets to where it needs to go.
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Primarily, I want to make sure that our metropolitan areas around the country are not shortchanged.
The last Surface Transportation Act was held up for 2 years because people were arguing about whether States got an allocation that was fair enough. But the greatest disparity for transportation funding in this country was between metropolitan areas, which seldom got their fair share: 78 cents on the dollar in Dallas, southern California shortchanged by over $1 billion.
One of the things we ought to do now, in this package while it's still in the formative stage, is to make sure that we use the existing STP allocation for all funds, not just part of the transportation funding. This formula would guarantee that metropolitan areas get their fair share and not concentrate money unduly in State departments of transportation.
The second suggestion I would make is that we not use a lot of onerous paperwork to make sure that people are complying with the use-
it-or-lose-it provisions.
We have very powerful compliance tools. We could simply make modest reductions in future revenue streams for people that don't make their target--hold them accountable, get the spending, and be able to protect the Treasury.
Third, we ought to consider having local incentives for people that are actually going to reach in and put more of their own money into projects, being able to provide some modest incentive so that we reward and not penalize those who will get more money into the economy faster.
Last, we ought to assure that States put the money where it can be spent. For example, if the State of New York has areas that can't take advantage of their allocation in time, but there are areas that can, we encourage the shift. The City of New York has almost $2 billion worth of projects that could meet that 2010 guideline. We ought to put language into this bill that encourages States to reallocate to areas that can use it, not risk losing it.
We ought to make sure that we don't shortchange transit investments. I think we ought to go back to the marker laid down by Chairman Oberstar last December, of $12 billion; that ought to be a recommendation as a floor for transit. This would assure that we are able to make investments in these transportation activities that actually create more jobs than other types of transportation investments. Transit is very job intensive.
A perfect example is a project we have in Portland, Oregon, where we have had stuck in the Department of Transportation a ``small-start'' streetcar expansion project for months. It meets all the statutory criteria, but the Bush Department of Transportation and their FTA and OMB could not figure out how to allocate the money. They couldn't even issue ``small start'' administrative rules that complied with the statute.
This is an opportunity to be able to jump start something that would not only be millions of local dollars for the transit project, but it would incent millions more for related development along the alignment. And it's not just Portland, Oregon; it's Tucson, it's Seattle. We have a chance to jump start a new American industry for streetcars for the 80 communities around America who want to move in this direction, even manufacturing streetcars in America for the first time in two-thirds of a century.
I urge we move in a positive way. Support transit, support our metropolitan areas, get our economy moving while we revitalize our communities.
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