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“ADMINISTRATION UNVEILS TRANSPORTATION FUNDING PLAN” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4094 on May 14, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ADMINISTRATION UNVEILS TRANSPORTATION FUNDING PLAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, today the Bush administration unveiled its transportation funding plan for the next 6-year surface transportation bill. It is pathetically inadequate. If you look at the inventory of needs across the United States of America, the crumbling bridges, the crumbling highways, the congestion, the need for investment, the President and his staff believe that this budget should be flat-lined. We can't afford the investment, they tell us. We can't afford to invest more in roads, bridges and highways, in high-speed rail and congestion mitigation. We just can't afford it. Oh, we can afford massive tax cuts for the wealthy, but if we are going to have massive tax cuts for the wealthy, his number one job creation proposal, we can't afford to create real jobs, jobs in the construction industry.
By his own measure, by the measure of the Bush administration Department of Transportation, every $1 billion spent on transportation infrastructure and construction produces 47,000 jobs in the United States of America. If the President would just increase his proposal to come close to that being made by the Republican Chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, they would create 705,000 new jobs a year in the United States of America; real jobs, construction jobs and related jobs in small businesses, and suppliers for those construction companies.
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Instead, they want to engage in the charade of producing jobs through trickle-down economics and tax cuts. It did not work in the 1980's for Ronald Reagan. It did not work for George Bush the First, and it is not going to work for this George Bush. In fact, his first tax cuts, which were record tax cuts, have not produced any jobs. We have lost nearly a million jobs since his first tax cuts. They have lots of excuses why we have lost those jobs since his record tax cuts went into effect. Mostly Bill Clinton, a few other things, world events; but they have got people to blame, and they are saying since those tax cuts did not work, let us borrow money from the Social Security trust Fund, from the Medicare trust fund; let us borrow money to fund more tax cuts because that is what we have to do now.
When we did that first set of tax cuts, we supposedly had a surplus. We no longer have a surplus. We have a huge and growing deficit. We are accumulating debt by more than $1 billion a day; $1 billion a day we are adding to the future debt of the young people of this country. And they want to borrow more money to finance tax cuts for woefully few people, an average of $105,000 for every millionaire. But somehow they think that $105,000 granted to every millionaire in this country in tax cuts will put more people to work than $1 billion invested in crumbling bridges, roads, and highways.
It is pretty simple. We could put people back to work. We could make this a more productive country. We could make our transportation system work better. But, no. Tax cuts for precious few political campaign contributors are more important to this administration.
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