[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 47 (Friday, April 24, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3574-S3575]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ISTEA
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, on Wednesday evening, the committee of
conference on the reauthorization of the Intermodal Surface
Transportation Efficiency Act, or ISTEA, had its first opportunity to
sit down in full conference and discuss the differences between H.R.
2400 and S. 1173, respectively, the House- and Senate-passed highway
bills. As a Senator who is not a member of the conference committee but
as a Senator who is, nevertheless, deeply committed to increasing
substantially the size of our national investment in transportation
infrastructure, I rise to urge the conferees to complete expeditiously
their deliberations on the highway reauthorization bill. The conferees
and all Senators are fully cognizant of the imminent--the imminent--
arrival of May 1, the date beyond which all States will be prohibited
by law from obligating any Federal-aid highway funds.
Senators will recall that, during the months of February and March, I
and a number of other supporters of the Byrd/Gramm/Baucus/Warner
amendment, spoke on the Senate floor on a daily basis to discuss the
critical need for the Senate to turn immediately to the ISTEA, or the
highway, reauthorization bill. I thought it was extremely important
that all 100 Senators, all 50 Governors, and the thousands of State
legislators and mayors and transportation agencies throughout our
Nation were fully aware that the Surface Transportation Extension Act--
the short-term ISTEA extension bill passed at the end of last year--
includes a deadline on the authorization of our federal aid highway and
transit programs. That short-term bill, P.L. 105-130, the Surface
Transportation Extension Act of 1997, includes the following passage,
and I quote from the law of the land.
The Magna Carta of 1215, which the English barons forced King John to
sign at Runnymede on the meadow near the Thames River, had a phrase
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within it, ``the law of the land.'' That was the phrase, ``the law of
the land.'' And our own American Constitution later used the phrase
``due process.'' ``Due process.'' We speak of the due process law. Due
process is an evolution from the law of the land in the Magna Carta.
So I want to read this following passage from the law of the land:
A State shall not obligate any funds for any federal aid
highway program project after May 1, 1998.
There is no equivocation. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. Let me
read it again. This passage is from the law of the land, the statute
that Congress passed last November:
A State shall not obligate any funds----
That is pretty absolute, pretty final. There are no doubts that arise
from reading that language.
A State shall not obligate any funds for any Federal aid
highway program project after May 1, 1998.
The short-term bill also includes other provisions which, in effect,
limit our States to obligating no more than $9.8 billion through May 1
on our Federal-aid highways. Even though the Transportation
Appropriations Act for the current fiscal year provided a total
obligation limitation of $21.5 billion, a historic 16 percent increase
above the prior year's level, the short-term authorization bill
effectively capped that amount at $9.8 billion, roughly 45 percent of
the allowable appropriation. It will be necessary for a new highway
bill to be enacted into law in order for the States to spend the
remaining $11.7 billion allowed under the appropriations act.
I recently contacted the Federal Highway Administration to find out
how States are progressing in the obligation of this $9.8 billion and
how their obligations compare to amounts they have obligated in prior
years by this time. As of Wednesday evening, the States had obligated
roughly $8.5 billion, or 86 percent, of the total $9.8 billion
permitted under the short-term extension law. The Federal Highway
Administration expects, however, that almost all of the $9.8 billion
will be obligated by the time the clock strikes--by the time that clock
just above the Presiding Officer's Chair strikes midnight one week from
today. Indeed, this rate of obligations is consistent with the amounts
the States customarily obligate by this point in the year.
We now find ourselves in a situation where the Federal spigot will be
shut off without even a dribble of funding going to States to continue
the annual construction process beyond the end of next week. States
will not be allowed to enter into any new obligations. It will be
anything but business as usual in our Nation's highway construction
enterprise. Roughly $11.7 billion in potential highway construction
funds will be frozen at the Treasury until a new highway bill is signed
into law. And if that highway bill is not signed into law soon, the
States will be required to lay off highway workers and bring their
planning and engineering activities to a halt. The longer it takes to
get a new highway bill enacted, the greater the likelihood that a good
part of the spring and summer construction season will be lost.
I remind my colleagues that the Federal Highway Administration
estimates that every billion dollars in federal highway spending
generates 42,000 jobs throughout our economy. This $11.7 billion in
construction funds that will be withheld from our States after May 1,
pending the enactment of a new highway bill, thus, represents almost
500,000 jobs. Put another way, Mr. President, our failure to enact a
highway bill in the near term could result in layoffs approaching half
a million workers over the long term.
I do not believe that any Senator or any Member of the other body
wants to see half a million highway workers thrown off the job. The
sooner the Congress sends a highway bill to the President and the
sooner the President signs that bill, the sooner we will ensure that
this does not happen.
Mr. President, I am hopeful that the conferees on the highway bill
will complete their work promptly. Through the intervention of the
bipartisan leadership of both the House and the Senate, each body has
now passed a comprehensive surface transportation bill with
substantially increased resources. This accomplishment was long overdue
and I commend the leadership of the House and the Senate, as well as
the leadership of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,
and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, in passing
bills that will finally authorize the obligation of all new revenues to
the highway trust fund.
I do not mean to belittle the task that is before the conferees in
the development of the final conference agreement on the ISTEA
reauthorization bill. There are significant differences in approach and
policy between the two bills. I am confident, however, that under the
leadership of Chairman Shuster and Chairman Chafee and their Democratic
counterparts, Congressman Oberstar and Senator Baucus, these
differences can be resolved so that we can adopt a conference report as
close to the May 1 deadline as possible. So I implore all conferees to
work diligently, as they always do, to ensure that our States, and our
local communities, see no interruption in the flow of critically needed
highway investment dollars.
(Mr. Hagel assumed the Chair.)
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