[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 62 (Thursday, May 6, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4938-S4939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HIGHWAY BILL FILIBUSTER

  Mr. BOND. Madam President, I am on the Senate floor to explain why I 
am on the floor today. A week ago, I came to the Senate floor to raise 
what I think is a very serious point, and that is, we are being 
filibustered on the procedural motions to take the highway bill to a 
conference with the House.
  I had the great privilege and pleasure back in January of 2003 to 
assume the chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Transportation and 
Infrastructure of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and I did 
so knowing full well that committee, along with the full committee, had 
the responsibility for drafting what I consider to be one of the most 
important infrastructure bills this Congress ever deals with, and that 
is the transportation bill or, as it is known by some, the highway 
bill. This year we are calling it SAFETEA. This is the acronym adopted 
by the administration to emphasize the fact that it is a safety-related 
measure.
  Good highways, roads, and bridges, along with mass transit and other 
elements, are vitally important to our country in a number of ways. For 
those of us who are stuck in traffic around Washington, DC, being stuck 
in traffic is like having breakfast in the morning, and it is as 
reliable as flowers in the springtime. Better roads mean less 
congestion, less hassle. But there are many other items that are very 
important as well, because good roads and the lack of congestion mean 
less pollution. Cars sitting idling pollute the atmosphere, so the 
atmosphere is worse, the air quality is worse if you have congestion.
  Highways are also important in another way. If we had passed the 
highway bill last winter or even when we passed it in February, we 
would have put people to work because every billion dollars of highway 
investment creates 47,000 jobs, and there is no question that we were 
waiting to see the jobs come back. We needed these highway jobs this 
year. We have missed this year's construction season.
  Fortunately, the tax cuts passed by this body are working, and we are 
seeing an upturn in the economy, particularly in small business. That 
is another speech I will make on the Senate floor.
  Tremendous numbers of people are going to work, as small business 
members, as proprietors starting their own businesses, 410,000 working 
selling their own products on e-Bay. They are creating good jobs. But 
we still need the jobs.
  Beyond that, good highways and good transportation are essential for 
the long-term stability and growth of our States, our communities, and 
our Nation.
  When I was Governor, I spent a lot of time working on economic 
development issues, and there is one thing I can tell you: if you are 
trying to get jobs into a particular community, they have to have 
transportation, particularly if they are dealing with goods or with 
people who are coming into that community. Good roads mean good jobs. 
Our highways, our roads, our bridges, even our waterways are the sinews 
of economic commerce. Without good transportation, we do not have 
growth and we don't have jobs.
  Finally, good highways mean safety. We kill about 43,000 people on 
the highways in the United States every year. The Department of 
Transportation says about a third of those killed are killed because of 
insufficient highway infrastructure. In other words, we have in 
Missouri many crowded two-way highways which have traffic that really 
demands a divided highway. When you have that, you have frustration, 
and very often people from out of State are not familiar with the 
curves and the hills and pass in areas where you cannot pass, and they 
have tragic head-on collisions. I say we kill roughly three people a 
day on Missouri's highways, and I think one out of three is killed 
because of inadequate highways. All you have to do is travel the 
highways and see the white crosses where people have died.

  To deal with that situation, I set out to work on a bipartisan basis. 
We have worked since a year ago January very closely with all the 
interested parties--the people interested in road building, community 
development workers, union members, environmental groups who wanted to 
have improved environmental processes. We brought all of them together 
in a bipartisan--let me emphasize bipartisan--bill for which I have 
thanked my colleagues on the other side many times for their great 
cooperation. We brought a good bill to the floor: $255 billion for 
highways and bridges over the next 6 years. Boy, we passed it with a 
whopping 76-vote majority in the Senate.
  I go home and people say: What is happening to the highway bill?
  I say: It is being filibustered.
  They say: What? It passed by 76 votes.
  I say: No, the simple procedural steps to move the bill to conference 
with the House are being filibustered.
  They say: What?
  I say: Yes, there are about six steps that have to be taken to send a 
bill to the House of Representatives so we can sit down in a conference 
and get a final bill that has to then pass both Houses and go to the 
President.
  We have been working for more than a year and a half. It has been 
more than 7 months since the existing bill, TEA-21, expired. It has now 
been 7 weeks since the Senate passed a highway bill. It has now been 5 
weeks since the House passed a highway bill. The majority leader and I 
have gone to the Senate floor and asked unanimous consent three times 
to take the necessary steps to move the bill to the House.
  All three requests have been objected to by my colleagues on the 
other side. Yesterday, a great group of citizens from the community of 
Saint Joseph, MO, was in my office. They traveled a long way to ask me: 
Why do we not have a highway bill? I told them I wish I had a 
reasonable answer, but I do not.
  Last Friday, I went to Kansas City, MO, where we had the road-
building group together and that was the union leaders, the 
contractors, the community development people, the local elected 
officials, and they gave me a stack of 43,000 signatures on petitions 
saying pass this bill. Unfortunately, my suitcase was not big enough 
and the restrictions made it difficult for me to bring it here with me, 
but if my colleagues want to see them we will bring 43,000 signatures 
to the floor to show how many Missourians want a highway bill.
  They asked me why we have not even begun the process of meeting with 
the House. There is no good reason, except politics, and that is not a 
good reason.
  Every single day someone asks me these questions, and now I ask my 
colleagues once again why can we not start a highway bill conference? 
Some on the other side say they demand to know what is going to come 
out of the conference. I would love to know what is going to happen 
tomorrow. I would love to know what is going to happen the day after 
tomorrow. No one can say with certainty what is going to come out of 
any conference.
  This is too important a bill to be a political football. We passed a 
total bill of $318 billion. The House passed one for a total of $275 
billion. We passed a much better bill. I want to see our bill passed. I 
want to see $318 billion. I want to see the environmental streamlining 
in the bill that allows the environmental concerns to be raised early 
on in the process and dealt with, that makes it easier to do the 
planning.
  The House bill had $11 billion worth of specific earmarks. My 
colleagues probably read about it in the editorial pages. Now, the 
occupant of the chair may take great pride in the fact that some of 
those were in a far northwest State, but I say to my colleagues we are 
not going to be able to take a bill that has $11 billion of earmarks 
that take away from the general allocation of funds among the States. 
So that is something we have to negotiate, but we need to do that to 
get a good bill.
  I cannot speak for the folks on the other side as to why they are 
willing to kill the bill. They will not even let us go to conference to 
try to get the bill that we passed. They have to be banking, I guess, 
on perhaps a cynical notion that the American people will understand or 
they will just blame Republicans, even though it is their side 
currently undertaking to kill the legislation.

[[Page S4939]]

  Are they killing it in hopes they can blame us? Is politics that 
cynical? I hope not. I thought we had to fight OMB to get the bill 
done, and I am willing to make that fight.
  As a matter of fact, people who have been around a long time know I 
took on that fight against a President of my own party. The year I 
campaigned, he made three wonderful appearances for me. I have great 
respect for him, but he vetoed a highway bill, and I was the deciding 
vote that overrode that veto, much as I respected him, because I know 
how important highways are to my State and to the country.
  Several months ago we started the normal bipartisan process of 
writing a highway bill. The bipartisanship carried through to a floor 
vote on the final bill. The Finance Committee provided the funds we 
needed. It was paid for, without a tax increase and without bonding.
  After we passed the bill, my colleagues and I cheered our success and 
praised the cooperative efforts across the aisle; yet somehow, now my 
colleagues across the aisle tell me they do not trust me? Is this how 
good faith bipartisanship is honored?
  Will someone come to the floor and tell me that I have not acted in 
good faith for days, weeks, and months through this process?
  I have every intention to get a strong bipartisan conference report 
to the Senate floor and to the desk of the President but we cannot do 
that if the Democrats prevent us from negotiating the final bipartisan 
bill. Unless they let the process go, this bill is dead and they will 
have killed it; and for what?
  My House counterpart Congressman Petri may have said it best as 
quoted in yesterday's edition of BNA:

       House Highways, Transit and Pipelines Subcommittee Chairman 
     Tom Petri, R-Wis., hailed the move to ``normal order,'' Petri 
     said; people analyzing the situation said in the absence of 
     an agreement--on a number--it was better to go back to 
     conference because ``there might have been wisdom in the 
     ideas of the founding fathers.

  The whole point of a conference with the House is to work out our 
differences and produce a final bill. It is past time to get to work on 
those differences. I also read a quote in the paper yesterday where the 
distinguished minority leader said his party did not want to ``roll the 
dice'' and hope they get adequate representation in conference.
  Instead, I submit that my colleagues are ``rolling the dice'' with an 
even bigger gamble. Rather than even giving conference a chance, they 
are betting that voters will prefer procrastination over progress.
  My constituents say, ``Senator, didn't the same people raising 
objections vote for the bill?'' They also ask, ``Senator, didn't many 
Democrats help draft the bill?'' Some even wonder ``Didn't I hear 
Senator so and so say the Nation needs a highway bill now?''
  The resounding answer to all of their questions is yes. Yes, my 
colleagues helped draft the bill. Yes, my colleagues voted in favor of 
the bill. Yes, my colleagues make cries for a strong bill now. And, 
yes, unless the politics stop, they will also have killed this bill. To 
steal a line from some great philosopher, they are all bark, no bite.
  One week ago today I was on the Senate floor attempting to move this 
process forward. Now Republicans in both Chambers of the Capitol are 
prepared to work in conference to resolve our differences. In the near 
future, we will vote in the Senate to determine who really wants to 
back up their bark with a bite.
  Right now safety and quality of life on our roads are taking a back 
seat to political warfare that has nothing to do with transportation. 
It is time to end the filibuster on the highway bill.
  That said, I renew my unanimous consent request from last week.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration 
of the House-passed highway bill, H.R. 3550; provided further, that all 
after the enacting clause, be stricken, the text of S. 1072, as passed, 
be inserted in lieu thereof; the bill be read a third time and passed; 
further, the Senate then insist on its amendment, request a conference 
with the House, and the Chair then be authorized to appoint conferees 
on the part of the Senate with a ratio of 11 to 10.
  Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object, at this time I am not able 
to make a statement; so, I will make a statement when our time comes. I 
object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. How much time do we have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-seven minutes remaining.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I will do my best to be finished in 10 minutes.

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