[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 10 (Wednesday, February 11, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S622-S624]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ISTEA

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to visit for just a minute the 
issue about the highway bill and roads.
  I would say to the Senator from Indiana, the Presiding Officer, that 
when I was in high school in a small town in North Dakota, I was 
agitating pretty hard to get a car. The way my dad warded me off from 
this desire to purchase a car was he said I'll let you buy a car 
because I have one spotted for you. But he insisted that I would have 
to restore it.
  Sure enough, my father, who delivered gasoline to rural users, family 
farmers, with his rural delivery gasoline truck, had been out on a farm 
and he saw a 1924 Ford Model T in a granary. It had been sitting in 
that granary for many, many years. He said, you know the fellow who 
used to own that farm and put that Model T in there, he lives out of 
State. You should write him a note and see if he would want to sell you 
that Model T. So I did, and the fellow wrote back and said he would be 
glad to sell me his 1924 Model T Ford. He sold it to me for $25 and 
sent me the original key and original owner's manual.
  I went out to look at this car I just bought and the rats had eaten 
out all the seat cushions and all the wiring

[[Page S623]]

and all there was was a metal shell with the engine, and no tires, of 
course. And so I was the proud owner of a 1924 Model T Ford. That's the 
car my dad got me for my social life. It wasn't much of a social life 
for long while, because it takes a long time to restore a Model T Ford. 
As a matter of fact, I didn't know much about it. I was told, by the 
way, the reason the owner drove it to the granary and put it in that 
granary for a long, long time was the Model T's are like the old red 
wagon you used to pull when you were a kid. If you turn the wheel in 
front too far, they would tip over. It's called jackknife. A lot of 
people don't remember that. But the Model T would jackknife if you 
turned the wheel too sharp. I was told, the fellow who owned it had 
been in town drinking and driving home from the bar he thought he saw 
some chickens in the road so he thought he'd take a sharp left turn and 
he jackknifed the Model T and it pinned him beneath the Model T and 
hurt him a little bit. He survived, but he parked the Model T in the 
granary and never drove it again. He was pretty upset, I guess.
  Then I bought it. Then I had a 1924 Model T Ford to restore and drive 
on modern roads, which was really quite an interesting thing to do. It 
didn't improve my social life, but nonetheless I had a car, an old car 
on new roads.
  One of the interesting things about automobiles in our society is 
that we have not only seen dramatic changes in our automobiles from the 
first Model T I purchased as a young kid, but the infrastructure that 
we use and that we need for those automobiles and for transportation 
has also changed dramatically.
  I am told that a new automobile in this country, manufactured here 
today, has more computer power in the automobile than existed in the 
lunar lander that put the first American on the Moon. There were 
breathtaking changes in manufacturing techniques and the production of 
consumer products, especially in automobiles. But we also have to 
understand that, as a society, that no matter how much we change these 
consumer products in ways that are really wonderful, we also must 
invest in infrastructure. So we have, over the years, consistently, 
Republicans and Democrats, everyone, worked together, from county 
commissioners to U.S. Senators and mayors and Governors, to decide we 
need a first-class road system. We have, in part, become a world-class 
economy because we have a first-class infrastructure and a first-class 
transportation system.
  We have before us in the U.S. Congress the need to pass a new highway 
bill. It is not a partisan issue. I don't come to the floor to blame 
anybody for anything. I come to the floor, as have some Republicans and 
some Democrats, and say it is time now to put the highway bill on the 
floor and let people who want to offer amendments offer the amendments 
and pass a highway bill so that those people out there who are running 
the highway programs in the State governments, and those people in the 
county commission offices and in the townships and the cities, will 
understand how much money is available to build and to repair roads and 
bridges. This plan must be passed by the Congress to allow all of those 
folks to understand what they can and cannot do; how much is available.

  This morning I stopped to put some gas in my car on the way to work. 
I not only paid for the gasoline, I also paid a tax. That tax is going 
to go from that station that I stopped at to the Government coffers and 
will be put in a trust fund, and it is going to be used in one way or 
another, I expect, to build a road or repair a bridge. That's the 
purpose of the gas tax that we have imposed, in order to provide for 
this infrastructure investment.
  We have a responsibility now to do last year's work. Some say, ``Gee, 
we didn't get it done last year. That is somebody else's fault.'' Or 
they point a number of different ways. ``But now we must wait for next 
year's budget in order to bring the highway bill to the floor.''
  We don't need to delay last year's work to deal with next year's 
budget. It doesn't make any sense to me. Those people who have come to 
the floor of the Senate on a bipartisan basis and said this Congress is 
moving at a Model T speed here--this is really glacial speed, at least 
as we have taken off from the blocks. Let us bring something to the 
floor that we must do and must do soon. Let all those who have 
amendments to it offer those amendments, have a debate on the 
amendments, and vote so we can do our business.
  Some say if we do it the other body will not do it anyway. The other 
body has signaled that it does not intend to take up a highway bill 
until the budget is complete this spring.
  I was on a television program with the chairman of the committee in 
the other body that deals with this issue. He said that the Speaker has 
indicated he doesn't want this to come up until after the budget 
process. I respectfully say to the Speaker, ``That may be your desire, 
but I don't think that's what the American people desire.'' It's 
certainly not what I desire. I hope at least those of us in the Senate 
could pass the bill and send it over to the House and then say to them 
the American people want this done. Let's put some pressure on them. 
The best way to apply pressure to get something done is to do our work. 
Our job at this point is to bring the bill to the floor and begin to 
deal with this bill.
  I have traveled in various parts of the world at various times. One 
of the interesting things that distinguishes a Third World country or a 
developing country from a developed country or an industrialized 
country is its infrastructure. I have been in hotels, the best hotel in 
a town, and turned on the tap and have gotten rust and water together 
because their infrastructure was terrible. And I have driven from that 
town in a Jeep, going only 25 or 30 miles an hour because the roads, 
the main roads, the best roads, are full of holes and ruts that will 
tear up a car's underside if you go faster than that. We all understand 
that many of those countries have not had the opportunity or the 
resources to develop their infrastructure.
  In some ways, the inability to develop the infrastructure predicts 
that they will not become a developed country; that they will remain a 
country that is a Third World country. We distinguish ourselves and 
have become an enormously successful country over a couple of hundred 
years by our desire to build in this country, to build and create. Part 
of that building and creating is to invest in infrastructure. And part 
of that is to invest in the best road and highway system anywhere.
  We face some daunting tasks now with respect to bridges and some of 
our roads in this country. They are in desperate need of repair. We 
have been putting money in a trust fund with which to do that. Yet, in 
many cases the trust fund hasn't been used because they want to build 
up that money to use it as an offset to make the deficit look different 
than it should have looked. Or others have other ideas on what to do 
with the money. The point is, we have a responsibility, all of us 
serving now, to deal with the infrastructure needs of our country now. 
I implore the majority leader and others to consider, as they develop 
the agenda for this Senate, that, beginning tomorrow or the day after 
tomorrow or next Monday, decide that high on the agenda, at the top of 
the list, will be for us to do what we must and should do: Pass a 
highway program that invests in this country's infrastructure.

  Mr. President, I indicated that this is not an issue of partisanship. 
It is, interestingly enough, every time you get a highway bill to the 
floor, it is a debate between a group of States that think the formula 
by which we divide the highway moneys is a terrible formula and others 
who think the formula is a wonderful formula. It depends on who gets 
and who gives. My State, I just would say with respect to the formula, 
as you might think, gets more back than it sends in for the highway 
program. So some States would look at my State and say: ``Well, your 
State is a receiving State or a recipient State or a beneficiary'' and 
my State, somebody else's State, they would say, ``is a donor State. We 
are upset about that.''
  Without getting into a debate about the formula, I would just say 
this. We are a State that is 10 times the size of Massachusetts, in 
North Dakota. You can put 10 States the size of Massachusetts inside 
the borders of North Dakota. Yet we have only 640,000 citizens. Those 
640,000 citizens cannot by themselves pay sufficient gas taxes locally

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to maintain the roads and bridges necessary in our State, in order to 
make it a national road system. We cannot do it.
  In fact, if you measure the burden another way, we in North Dakota 
rank among the highest in the country in per-person payments of Federal 
gas tax. Our burden ranks among the highest in the country. But others 
want to segregate it out and say, ``Well, you are a recipient State and 
that is not right.''
  I say, but we in North Dakota pay for the Coast Guard.
  We don't mind doing that. I am a taxpayer. My constituents are 
taxpayers. We pay for the Coast Guard. We don't really have any coast 
to guard. North Dakota is landlocked. We don't mind really doing that. 
That is the way these things should be done on a national basis.
  When it comes to investing in highway programs, we feel also that 
there ought to be a national program to make sure that our country is a 
country that is not divided by those areas that have good roads and 
those that don't, because some can afford it and some can't.
  Roads and infrastructure represent a national need and a national 
priority, and the satisfaction of that need and priority makes this a 
better and a stronger country. I hope that the discussions on the floor 
of the Senate by Senator Byrd, Senator Gramm and Senator Baucus and so 
many others who are urging that we be allowed on this agenda to 
consider very, very soon the highway reauthorization bill, I hope those 
urgings will be heard and that we will very soon be on that particular 
business.
  Mr. President, with that, I see a colleague is on the floor. I yield 
the floor.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as 
in morning business for a period not to exceed 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator is recognized.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Hutchinson pertaining to the introduction of S. 
1631 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 
minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for that purpose.
  Mr. THOMAS. Thank you very much.

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