What a difference a year makes. Last year, Chairman Latham put forward a responsible bill that invested in our nation's infrastructure and took care of the housing needs of our most vulnerable citizens. The bill we consider today, however, is a stark contrast.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate Chairman Latham's efforts to put this bill together and thank Ed Pastor for his leadership as the new Ranking Member of the subcommittee.
What a difference a year makes. Last year, Chairman Latham put forward a responsible bill that invested in our nation's infrastructure and took care of the housing needs of our most vulnerable citizens. The bill we consider today, however, is a stark contrast.
Last year, Chairman Latham's bill included $1.45 billion for Amtrak's capital grant program. This was the highest funding level for capital that Amtrak has ever received, and it was $400 million higher than the Senate included. Chairman Latham proposed a bold new initiative of $500 million to bring Amtrak's aging bridges and tunnels up to a state-of-good-repair. On the floor, Chairman Latham stated, "This will immediately create jobs, as the CBO has scored it with an almost 80 percent outlay rate in the first year."
Today's bill cuts Amtrak's funding nearly $400 million below the CR sequester level and to the lowest level in more than a decade. Amtrak's President, Joe Boardman, has stated this will jeopardize Amtrak's long-distance trains and some short haul routes. Amtrak will have to suspend mechanical overhauls on equipment resulting in slow orders and furloughs of hundreds of mechanical employees and engineers.
The Railway Supply Institute represents more than 500 companies that employ more than 90,000 people with business totaling more than $20 billion a year. A quarter of these companies rely on business with Amtrak, commuter railroads and transit authorities. In fact, Amtrak's top 50 vendors include -
o the Drummac Company out of Jacksonville, Florida which received more than $6.2 million last year to perform mechanical maintenance, inspections, and repairs on Amtrak equipment;
o BV Oil Company in Doral, Florida, which received more than $5.1 million through its fuel sales; and
o Siemens Corporation in Sacramento, CA, which received more than $71 million.
The capital program of the Federal Aviation Administration is another example of unsustainable cuts. It maintains all of the navigation equipment that supports our nation's air traffic control system, including FAA's NextGen program, which is a multi-year effort to modernize the air traffic control system by transitioning from a ground-based navigation system to a satellite-based navigation system. Last year, Chairman Latham funded FAA's capital program at $2.75 billion, which was $40 million more than the FY 2013 authorized level. A year later, this bill cuts FAA's capital program by $575 million below the FY 2013 CR level.
While the Chairman has stated that the bill before us preserves funding for the NextGen programs currently under deployment, it will most certainly delay progress on the next phase. Contracts to advance these new technologies won't be awarded, and our nation's air carriers will have to wait longer for the efficiency and capacity improvements at a time when FAA estimates that the national cost of airport congestion and delays was almost $22 billion last year.
Our aviation industry contributes nearly $1.3 trillion to the U.S. economy. FAA's air traffic controllers manage nearly 70,000 flights per day which, on an annual basis, carry more than 730 million passengers. With such a vital role in our economy, now is not the time to disinvest in our air traffic control system.
Exactly a year ago today, the House was considering the FY 2013 T-HUD appropriations bill on the House floor. The bill contained $3.3 billion for CDBG, $1.7 billion higher than this bill. Representative Chaffetz offered an amendment to cut the CDBG program to $2.95 billion, still $1.3 billion higher than the level in today's bill.
Member after Member on the majority side of this committee, including the subcommittee chairman, spoke out against the cut, noting how important CDBG was to cities and States across the country. In fact, seventeen Republican appropriators including Chairman Rogers and Chairman Latham helped to defeat this wrongheaded cut by a vote of 157-267. Maybe I missed the news story: did something happen since that vote to make CDBG expendable to cities and States throughout the country?
On April 17th of this year, in his statement at the HUD budget hearing, Chairman Latham chastised the Administration for including nearly a billion dollars for new Administration initiatives. He remarked: "These increases are particularly puzzling in the context of a request that also proposes to cut core state and local partnerships like CDBG and HOME." The President's request for CDBG is $1.1 billion higher than this bill.
My colleagues in the majority know there are valuable, necessary programs in the bill that are needed in their communities. Yet, the bill before us underfunds undermines the very initiatives that will create jobs and provide housing for vulnerable Americans.
What has changed in a year? Have these programs grown ineffective? Have our local communities solved their local infrastructure problems? Has homelessness disappeared?
The Senate Subcommittee on Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development marked up its bill yesterday afternoon.
The Senate's allocation was $54.045 billion which is nearly $10 billion more than this bill. The Senate bill addresses key infrastructure needs that have received strong bipartisan support, including:
- $550 million for the TIGER grant program;
- $1.45 billion to fund Amtrak;
- More than $3 billion for the Community Development Block Grant program; and
- $1 billion for the HOME program.
It is clear that the Senate thinks that we need to invest more in our communities. It is clear that the President, through his budget request, thinks more investment is needed at a time when unemployment in the construction industry is nearly 11 percent..
What has changed in the past year is that the House passed a more draconian Budget Resolution. The Ryan Budget is detached from reality and the overall allocation provided to this Committee was unworkable from the start. It forced impossible choices and is, predictably, creating winners and losers among our twelve subcommittees. THUD usually has broad bipartisan support. Unfortunately, the inadequate allocation has resulted in an unacceptable bill that I cannot support.
It is my sincere hope that we can improve this bill as the process moves forward, but that cannot happen unless a larger budget agreement is reached and sequestration is addressed. I again wish to reiterate my concern about any delay in those discussions. There are only three months until the end of the fiscal year. A deal must be reached soon or most of this year's Appropriations bills stand no chance.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Source: U.S. Department of HCA
