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“STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S5143-S5147 on July 29, 2019.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS
By Mr. LEAHY (for himself, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Bennet, Mr.
Blumenthal, Mr. Boozman, Mr. Brown, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Cardin,
Mr. Carper, Mr. Casey, Ms. Collins, Mr. Coons, Ms. Duckworth,
Mr. Durbin, Mr. Enzi, Mrs. Feinstein, Mrs. Gillibrand, Ms.
Harris, Ms. Hassan, Mr. Heinrich, Ms. Hirono, Mr. Jones, Mr.
Kaine, Mr. King, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Manchin, Mr. Markey, Mr.
Merkley, Mr. Moran, Mr. Murphy, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Peters, Mr.
Reed, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Schatz, Mr. Schumer, Mrs. Shaheen, Ms.
Smith, Ms. Stabenow, Mr. Tester, Mr. Udall, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr.
Warner, Ms. Warren, Mr. Whitehouse, and Mr. Wyden):
S. 2303. A bill to allow United States citizens and legal residents to travel between the United States and Cuba; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about America's highway infrastructure. It is important to every State. I have just come back from Wyoming, and it clearly is important in my home State. It is important in every community. It is important in every Tribe in the country. I see that week after week in Wyoming. Our roads, our bridges, our highways, our tunnels support America's economic growth and our competitiveness. The Presiding Officer, from his home State of Missouri, knows this as well. These are an essential part, really, of everyday life for all of America.
We use the infrastructure. We use the roads, the bridges, the tunnels. We use them when we drive to work, when we head to school or we head off to summer vacation. Our economy is built on a well-
functioning road system that allows products from rural areas to get transported to population centers. They are used to ship American-made products and goods from one coast to the other.
Certainly in Wyoming, we see a lot of goods coming in then being transported from the coast in California to Chicago, with truck after truck going through Wyoming. Interstates, like I-80 in my home State of Wyoming, are critical arteries for commerce in this country. Our roads create jobs. They move products, and they keep our country running and going strong.
In 2015, the U.S. transportation system moved a daily average of about 49 million tons of freight; that is, a daily average of 49 million tons of freight worth more than $53 billion--every single day. Our roads and our bridges have to keep pace. These systems are vital to our country, and they need to be taken care of. We must maintain, upgrade, and, when necessary, build new ones.
Since his election, President Trump has called on Congress to act on infrastructure. Last year, Congress answered the President's call by passing America's Water Infrastructure Act. He signed it into law. It passed this body 99 to 1. The legislation helped streamline major projects and helped keep communities safe. It made a significant investment in our Nation's dams and our locks and our ports and in drinking water systems.
Now is the time to do the same for our roads and for our bridges. That is why, today, I am introducing America's Transportation Infrastructure Act, and I am doing it along with my fellow leaders of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Ranking Member Carper and Senators Capito and Cardin.
This legislation will make a historic investment in our roads. It will cut Washington redtape. It will improve safety and will help grow our economy. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act authorizes
$287 billion over 5 years from the highway trust fund. Of that money,
$259 billion will go directly to the States through the highway formula funding process. This is the largest investment in America's roads in any highway bill ever passed by Congress. The legislation will help the entire country. It will ensure both rural and urban areas have access to funding.
Formula funding gives each State the flexibility it needs to address specific surface transportation needs. The formula-based approach has a proven track record of efficiently delivering infrastructure money directly to the States. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act maintains this important approach so that States will get the funds they need faster.
America's Transportation Infrastructure Act also continues successful Federal loan programs, such as the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which many people in the business know as TIFIA. TIFIA and programs like it get taxpayers significant bang for their buck. A single taxpayer dollar in the TIFIA program can be leveraged 40 times that much in terms of infrastructure spending.
Between new authorizations, leveraging within Federal loan programs, with State-match requirements and likely additions from the Commerce and Banking Committees, our bill's total impact on infrastructure will be nearly one-half trillion dollars--a historic high. With these investments, it is critical for us to speed up government approvals for important projects.
Last Congress, the Environment and Public Works Committee heard testimony about a highway safety project that I am very familiar with in Wyoming--and not too far from where the Presiding Officer lives--
near the interstate north of Sheridan, between Sheridan and Montana. It took a decade to get the permits but actually took only months to build. That has to stop. This was a safety project linking our States together. It was held up for 10 years because of Washington permits. It is unacceptable. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act cuts Washington redtape so projects can get done faster, better, cheaper, and smarter. President Trump has set a goal for his administration of completing environmental reviews for projects within 2 years. It is a goal that I applaud, and the policy is called One Federal Decision.
Our legislation makes key elements of that policy into law. Instead of several Federal agencies having duplicate requirements on the same project, the process is simplified because it needs to be simplified. Our bill gives States increased flexibility so that Federal approvals can get moving and so that project construction can get started. It also reduces the amount of paperwork that is needed from the States to complete a project. Our legislation gets long delayed safety projects moving faster. Washington shouldn't prioritize paperwork over people's safety, but that has happened in the past, and it is unacceptable.
America's Transportation Infrastructure Act makes road safety a top priority. It supports innovative research and technology deployment, including new construction technologies that will make roads safer and will expedite project delivery. For example, the bill supports technologies that allow construction projects to be managed digitally. That will enable project managers to better track projects from design through operation.
The Presiding Officer knows this and sees it, and I saw it this past weekend. When a car collides with an animal on a highway, the results can be dramatic and sometimes even deadly for both the animal and for the driver. Our bill creates a pilot program to build wildlife highway crossings to minimize the danger of vehicle-wildlife collisions.
Across the country, aging bridges are in need of maintenance. Our bill establishes a competitive grant program to help address the backlogs of bridges that are in poor condition. Our bill establishes a new program to incentivize States to lower the total number of fatalities with there being a special focus on pedestrian deaths, which are on the rise.
Of course, the climate is changing, and humans have a collective responsibility to do something about it. I believe that American innovation, not government regulation and taxation, is the answer to our addressing a changing climate. Our bill includes a climate change title that ensures the durability of our transportation infrastructure, and our bill provides flexible resources to help States reduce carbon emissions. It helps States build more resilient highways. We want to make sure that our roads and our bridges are built to withstand extreme weather events, like hurricanes and floods, or natural disasters, like wildfires, earthquakes, and rockslides.
The legislation also helps to reduce transportation-related carbon emissions. The very successful bill that had been signed into law previously and is expiring, the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, is a program that has helped communities in Wyoming and Montana to replace aging school buses and public equipment. The Diesel Emissions Reduction Act helps to reduce black carbon emissions. This is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Our bill reauthorizes this program, and it supports innovation. Carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration technologies hold the key to major emissions reductions. I have introduced the USE IT Act, along with my colleagues in the Senate, to support this important research, and it is included in this bill.
As I have stated, this is bipartisan legislation. It doesn't just include Republican priorities; it includes Democratic priorities as well. For example, this legislation establishes grant programs to help fund the construction of electric vehicle charging stations and infrastructure for other alternative fuel vehicles, such as natural gas. This provision has been a priority for several Senators, including for Ranking Member Carper.
My priority is to make sure these vehicles are actually contributing to the maintenance of our roads. With a rapidly growing electric vehicle market, it is necessary to make sure drivers of these alternative fuel vehicles are contributing to road maintenance. Nearly every automaker is ramping up electric vehicle production. Right now, none of these vehicles pay to maintain America's roads. How can that be? The highway trust fund is funded through fuel taxes. Because they don't buy gasoline, these vehicles simply do not contribute. Yet electric vehicles do as much damage to our highways as do traditional gas-powered vehicles. Everyone who drives on our Nation's roads should contribute to the cost of road maintenance.
Our bill is bipartisan, substantial, and needs to be paid for. As the Presiding Officer knows, the Committee on Environment and Public Works doesn't have jurisdiction over revenues for the highway bill. Ranking Member Carper and I are going to work closely with Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Ron Wyden to responsibly pay for this legislation.
In the process of writing this legislation, we have received extensive feedback from experts from our home States and from other Senators. The bill has already received broad support from groups like the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Highway Users Alliance, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, the American Council of Engineering Companies, the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association, the North American Concrete Alliance, and many more.
We have planned to mark up America's Transportation Infrastructure Act this week. The business meeting will be a great opportunity in which to strengthen the legislation and move this important process forward. I am thankful to Ranking Member Carper and to all of the members of our committee for working with me on this important piece of legislation. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act will grow the Nation's economy, will improve the safety of our roads, and will enhance the quality of life for the American people.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss America's Transportation Infrastructure Act, legislation that I introduced today with the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, John Barrasso, along with our subcommittee chair on Transportation and Infrastructure, Shelley Moore Capito, and our ranking member from Maryland, Ben Cardin.
Our legislation reauthorizes our Nation's surface transportation laws and makes a historic $287 billion investment in our Nation's roads, highways, and bridges. Our Nation's first highway bill was enacted just a few years after the world's first concrete highway was paved outside of Detroit, MI. Henry Ford had just introduced the Model T, and the first stop-go traffic light would soon be installed at the intersection of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, OH.
A century ago, the idea of speedy and safe transcontinental travel was beyond our imagination and even further from being realized. We have come a long way since then.
Today, more than 4 million miles of roadway and 600,000 bridges help link our country together. Some 220,000 of those miles combine to make up our national highway system. Our transportation infrastructure is essential to America's economy, to our society, and to our way of life. It connects us to commerce; it connects us to service; and, more importantly, it connects us to one another.
The sad truth, however, is that, as we all know too well, many of these roads, highways, and bridges are in poor condition today. They have been in use far beyond, for many of them, the intended duration of their original design. A great many roadways and bridges simply need repaving, while some need repairs, and others need to be completely redesigned.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, approximately 20 percent of our Federal-aid roadways are in poor condition, as are 47,000 bridges. That is in large part because, for far too long, our Nation's highway trust fund has been operating on the brink of insolvency. The highway account is running at an $11 billion deficit, and that deficit is growing.
Meanwhile, despite spending more from the fund than we collect, we still aren't spending enough to make a dent in the $800 billion backlog of investments needed to significantly improve conditions on many of the roads, highways, and bridges that millions of Americans--all of us--use and depend on every day.
All of this has contributed to an unacceptable level of uncertainty for States, for cities, for businesses, and for families. It has prevented us, as a nation, from addressing serious challenges across our transportation infrastructure that go well beyond simply filling potholes.
For too long, we have failed to make meaningful progress in America toward improving safety, easing traffic congestion, reducing harmful emissions, and enhancing resilience. We can do better than this. The legislation that is before us today, if enacted, will help put our country back on the right track. I am excited about it, and I am grateful to everyone who has contributed in ways both large and small to the drafting of the legislation that Senator Barrasso and I have introduced today.
While this bill will leverage badly needed investments in rebuilding our roads, highways, and bridges, it will do a lot more than that. It will help expedite the movement of people and goods throughout our country. It will support the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs here too. It will help alleviate some of the congestion we face in urban and suburban parts of all 50 States--areas across the country--on an almost daily basis.
America's Transportation Infrastructure Act will help make real the vision of a safer, more connected, efficient, and climate-friendly transportation system, one that will endure the test of time and keep up with the evolving demands of the world's biggest economy. Our bill is a good start. Now we need to build on it and make it better.
With respect to safety, too many pedestrians and bicyclists put their lives at risk every day when they use our roadways. In 2017, there were more than 37,000--37,000--fatalities on our Nation's roadways, including approximately 7,000 nonmotorized users. Think about that: 37,000 fatalities. That is more than all of the people who live in Dover, DE, or in Laramie, WY.
After trending down for many years, in the last decade pedestrian deaths have increased sharply and are now at a 25-year high. In Tribal communities, that fatality rate is even higher. That is just unacceptable.
Our legislation addresses this carnage by investing $2.5 billion in Federal funds per year in safety improvements and by compelling States and cities with very high rates of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities to do their share as well.
Our legislation also expands funding for bike paths, sidewalks, and other transportation alternatives to $1.2 billion per year. It empowers States and cities to design, implement, and manage those projects so they are better designed to fit the needs of those States and cities.
Too many Americans simply don't have safe places to walk or bike. In some cases, we build roads in ways that make it impossible for people to walk or bicycle where they need to go, be it a grocery store, a daycare center, a health facility--you name it.
America's transportation infrastructure should connect us, not divide us. Let me say that again. America's transportation infrastructure should connect us, not divide us. It should foster greater economic opportunity, not disparity.
Our legislation seeks to improve connectivity and accessibility by establishing a pilot program for States and cities to measure access to destinations like hospitals, schools, and grocery stores. Our bill also funds a program to help remove barriers, such as chronically underused highways--when appropriate--that create obstacles to access and mobility.
But an even more pressing need to address throughout America is the roads, highways, and bridges that are actually overcapacity today, where cars and trucks and their passengers sit for hours in traffic. Last year, every American driver lost, on average, 97 hours due to traffic congestion. That is 97 hours for the average driver per year. That is 4 days. It is not just a nuisance for drivers; last year, it cost our country $87 billion in lost productivity--$87 billion. Let's not forget that all that time we waste sitting in our cars and trucks also degrades the quality of the air we breathe, increases the cost of our healthcare, and raises the cost of the goods we buy.
Our legislation addresses this predicament by authorizing additional funding for the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program, which has been used to build carpool lanes and support a number of other alternatives to reduce congestion.
In addition, our legislation recognizes that in many places, it is just not possible to build additional lanes, so we need to address congestion by managing travel demand through innovative technology, transit, and tolling. That is why we have also created a new program for our largest cities to provide new tools--new tools--to help address congestion challenges.
That brings us to the evermore apparent reality of climate change and its ever-worsening impact on, among other things, our infrastructure. The cars, trucks, and vans that we drive have become our Nation's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, accelerating and exacerbating the effects of climate change and bringing with it increasingly extreme weather that we are witnessing throughout the world on an almost daily basis. For example, in Europe last week, temperatures exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit. And we have examples here too. We have just come off of the hottest 4 years in the history of this country since we have been measuring it, and this year looks like it is going to be the hottest yet. We have to do more than fight, and with this legislation, we will.
I am proud to announce that America's Transportation Infrastructure Act includes the first-ever climate title in a transportation bill in the history of Congress. Our legislation calls for investing $10 billion over the next 5 years directly in programs and policies that will combat climate change by reducing emissions and improving the resiliency of our transportation networks and infrastructure.
One such program is a $1 billion investment in charging and fueling stations for electric and alternative fuel vehicles traveling in heavily traveled corridors across America. While Henry Ford's Model T and its internal combustion engine are an important part of our country's transportation system, zero-emission electric vehicles represent our future.
Unfortunately, in most parts of America today, drivers lack reasonable access to charging or fueling stations for electric or hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Our legislation helps to address that concern by creating competitive grants for States and localities to build hydrogen, natural gas, and electric vehicle charging and fueling infrastructure along many of America's most heavily traveled highway corridors.
Meanwhile, increasingly frequent and extreme weather events continue to erode our transportation networks, and sea level rise threatens the structural integrity and longevity of our surface transportation infrastructure. We see that happening now in my home State of Delaware, along major portions of the East Coast, and in the flooding that has occurred in the heartland of our country. It has been reported in the news that in some places in America, the temperature has been so hot that the asphalt roads and highways are bubbling up from the heat. Try driving through that.
Our legislation seeks to help address these threats by investing nearly $5 billion over 5 years in a new formula program available to all States and a competitive resiliency grant program. Both the formula program and the new PROTECT Grants Program would support projects across America that reinforce, upgrade, or realign existing transportation infrastructure to better withstand extreme weather events and the effects of climate change, like the record-setting temperatures I have spoken of.
Let me briefly mention one other thing. Through the use of natural infrastructure, like the marshes and wetlands that protect roads from storm surges during tropical cyclones and Nor'easters, our bill also helps harness the power of Mother Nature to improve the resilience of transportation projects.
That gives you at least a glimpse of some of the exciting aspects of the legislation our committee chairman, John Barrasso, and I are introducing today, again with the help of a lot of people on our committee, throughout the Senate--Democrats and Republicans--and from all parts of this country. We introduced our legislation with their help and help from every corner of the country, and it comes from State and local governments as well.
In the coming months, I look forward to sharing more stories about how the America's Transportation Infrastructure Act can tackle complicated issues, improve our daily lives, and help us build the roads, highways, and bridges of the future.
As bright as the chairman and I are on our committee--and our very able staff members like to think we are--I am confident that our bill can be improved as it moves through the legislative process in the months ahead. As I oftentimes say, if it isn't perfect, let's make it better. As good as what we have done is--and we are proud of our handiwork--we know it can be better, and we look forward to making it better. That begins tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. with a markup in the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Before I close, I would be remiss if I failed to remind everyone that with respect to surface infrastructure, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is almost always, how are we going to pay for the improvements and the programs we all know we need? The fact is, as I have said, the highway trust fund is going broke, and, if we are honest with one another, our way of paying for it is broken too. So what should we do about it?
It is important to note that our legislation will continue to fund the State-level vehicle-miles-traveled pilot programs established in the 2015 bill. I am especially pleased, however, that our legislation also includes a national vehicle-miles-traveled pilot program--the first of its kind. I believe that user fee-based approaches are generally the best way to fund our Nation's surface transportation system and that vehicle-miles-traveled systems, which seek to ensure that all road users pay their fair share, are the future.
In the meantime, there needs to be a bridge to that future, and that bridge will not rely on a silver bullet but on what I refer to as a lot of silver BBs, some of which are bigger than others.
With that, let me conclude by reiterating that Chairman Barrasso and I look forward to working closely with our colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee--a committee on which I am privileged to serve--to ensure that this bill is responsibly paid for.
I have already begun to meet with several of our colleagues on the relevant committees of jurisdiction, and I am anxious to work with them and all of our colleagues as we face not just the dawning challenges that lie ahead but the opportunities as well.
Winston Churchill once said, ``You can always count on America to do the right thing in the end, after trying everything else.'' If we pull together and work together in the House and Senate, as I believe we tend to do in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, then we can reach that end a good deal sooner than Mr. Churchill and a lot of the skeptics might otherwise expect. So why don't we show those skeptics what we can do? A great many Americans are counting on us to do just that, and we can't let them down.
Again, I thank my staff, the staff of our Chairman Barrasso, and the staff of Senators Capito, Ben Cardin, and others on our committee for their excellent work and for negotiating in good faith throughout this year. Their spirit and dogged commitment are a big part of what brought us to where we are today.
But we all know that the introduction of a solid bipartisan bill, even when it is followed the next day by a successful markup, we hope, in committee--we must acknowledge that it is just the beginning, but it is a good start, one that we and our colleagues can and I hope will build on, enabling us and America to seize the day. I don't know a lot of Latin, but I think Latin for ``seize the day'' is ``carpe diem,'' or as we say in Delaware, ``Carper diem.''
Thank you.
Mr. LEAHY. Today I am introducing, along with 45 Democratic and Republican cosponsors, the Freedom for Americans to Travel to Cuba Act of 2019. Identical legislation was introduced on July 25th by Representatives Jim McGovern and Tom Emmer in the House.
We are introducing this bill for one reason: so Americans can travel to Cuba in the same way that they can travel to every other country in the world except North Korea, to which President Trump banned travel by executive order. Based on my conversations with other Senators, I am confident that if we were afforded the opportunity to vote on this bill, more than 60 Senators would support it.
It is indefensible that the Federal government restricts American citizens and legal residents from traveling to a tiny country 90 miles away that poses no threat to us. At a time when U.S. airlines are flying to Cuba, does anyone here honestly think that preventing Americans from traveling there is an appropriate role of the Federal government? Why only Cuba? Why not Venezuela? Or Russia? Or Iran, or anywhere else? It is a vindictive, discriminatory, self-
defeating vestige of a time long passed.
This bill would end these Cold War restrictions on the freedom of Americans to travel. It would not do away with the embargo.
Americans overwhelmingly favor travel to Cuba. The last poll I saw, a CBS poll, found that 81 percent of Americans support expanding travel to Cuba. Officials in the White House, however, have a different agenda, driven by purely domestic political calculations. They have not only rolled back steps taken by the previous administration to encourage engagement with Cuba, they have gone further by imposing even more onerous restrictions on the right of Americans to travel. As a result, the number of Americans traveling to Cuba this year is projected to plummet by half, due to the policies of their own government. And the thousands of private Cuban entrepreneurs, the taxi drivers, the Airbnb renters, restaurants, and shops that depend on American customers are struggling to survive. It is a shortsighted, anachronistic policy that is beneath our democracy.
I and others, including Republicans, have traveled to Cuba many times over the past 20 years, met with Cuban officials, with Cubans who have been persecuted for opposing the government, and with many others. Every one of us wants to see an end to political repression in Cuba. The arrests and mistreatment of dissidents by the Cuban government should be condemned, just as we should condemn such abuses by other governments including some, like Egypt and Turkey, whose leaders have been welcomed at the White House and the State Department. Americans can travel freely to Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, but not to Cuba.
The issue is how best to support the people of Cuba who struggle to make ends meet, and who want to live in a country where freedom of expression and association are protected. Anyone who thinks that more economic pressure, or ultimatums, will force the Cuban authorities to stop arresting political dissidents and embrace democracy have learned nothing from history. For more than half a century we tried a policy of unilateral sanctions and isolation, and it achieved neither of those goals. Instead, it is the Cuban people who were hurt the most. And it provided an opening in this hemisphere for Russia, China, and our other competitors.
Change is coming to Cuba, and we can help support that process. Or we can sit on the sidelines and falsely claim to be helping the Cuban people, while pursuing a failed policy of punitive sanctions. The bipartisan bill I am introducing is about the right of Americans, not Cubans, to travel. Every member of Congress, especially those who have been to Cuba, should oppose restrictions on American citizens that have no place in the law books of a free society.
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