[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 68 (Friday, May 14, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5495-S5496]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRANSPORTATION FUNDING

  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, this week brought the disturbing news that 
the Senate, the House, and the White House might not be able to agree 
on a new transportation funding bill, that we would have to set it 
aside then until next year to be acted upon. That would be disastrous 
for my home State of Minnesota, and I suspect for many of the States my 
colleagues represent.
  Traffic congestion in our main metropolitan areas in Minnesota has 
worsened at alarming rates during the past decade. The deterioration of 
our roads, highways, and bridges throughout greater Minnesota, more 
rural areas of our State, has also reached crisis levels. More and more 
of our highways have become unsafe due to this deterioration and 
congestion.
  More motorists are dying, being injured or maimed as a result. 
Business owners and farmers find that transporting their goods and 
products to market takes longer and is more costly. Some of the 
seasonal national weight restrictions force major employers such as 
Polaris, Artic Cat, and Marvin Windows, which are located in 
northwestern Minnesota, to have to reroute their trucks, adding time, 
expense, and unreliability that become major drawbacks to operating a 
business in Minnesota.
  Businesses executives, their employees and their families, have to 
take longer to drive to and from work, school, and weekend cabins, and 
they are less safe in doing so. Every day and night, many thousands of 
Minnesotans endure these delays and disruptions.

[[Page S5496]]

They are angry and frustrated, and they rightfully want their 
Government to act on their behalf now. They have paid and they will 
continue to pay their Federal gasoline tax dollars into the highway 
trust fund, and they want that money fully expended on vitally needed 
highway improvement projects starting now.
  Our Senate bill, the one we passed some time ago, responded to their 
needs. Our bill increased the highway and transit funding significantly 
over the next 6 years compared to the last 6 years. For my State of 
Minnesota, the increase is 81 percent, thanks to the overall increase 
which was passed with bipartisan support at the committee and the full 
Senate level, and with special appreciation to Senator Grassley of 
Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, for correcting the 
ethanol penalty which was penalizing Minnesota and other States that 
placed a mandate on ethanol consumption as part of every gallon of 
gasoline.
  Senator Coleman, my colleague from Minnesota, and I worked together 
to keep these provisions benefiting Minnesota in the Senate bill. 
Unfortunately, the House scaled back their overall bill from what even 
most of their Members wanted themselves, at the insistence of the White 
House. But the President said even that reduced level in the House bill 
is too high, and the Senate's version is too high a figure. In fact, 
the President set a level of funding that is $60 billion less than in 
our Senate bill. That is $10 billion a year less for highway and other 
transit projects throughout America.
  We are told that every $1 billion of spending on transportation 
projects creates 47,500 jobs. So $10 billion a year less spending means 
475,000 fewer jobs this summer, next summer, and throughout the next 6 
years--475,000 jobs, American jobs, jobs that we could be putting into 
place right now. People in my State and your State would be going to 
work right now to perform vitally needed infrastructure improvement 
projects with dollars that have already been committed and received and 
are set aside for this purpose. Why doesn't that matter to the White 
House? Why can't we act as we should anyway to move this matter 
forward?
  The President has his rightful prerogative to veto a bill with which 
he does not agree. I am told by the manager of the bill in the Senate 
that he believes we have the votes to override that veto because these 
projects are so important to so many Members, and rightfully so. He 
believes the House has the necessary votes to override a Presidential 
veto because the projects in the bill are vitally important to their 
districts. That is the way the system is supposed to work. If the 
President vetoes, we can attempt to override so the public interest is 
served.
  From what I am reading this week, the majority leader and the Speaker 
of the House have said they will not take the conference committee 
report, the final legislation, to the White House if the President is 
going to veto it. That means the President can dictate to the Congress 
the level of funding he will accept, and we have no choice but either 
to agree to that reduced level or to set the bill aside until next 
year.
  That is not the way the process is supposed to work, if we believe in 
something--and we do. I commend Senator Inhofe, the manager of the 
bill, who has been tenacious and terrific at standing up for the needs 
of, I am sure, the State of Oklahoma, but also reflective of the urgent 
needs in my State of Minnesota and elsewhere, and saying this is the 
right thing to do.
  On paper this may look like it is some kind of brand new fiscal 
responsibility that we certainly have not seen from the White House in 
the last 3\1/2\ years, with budget deficits extending now as far as the 
eye can see at record levels. But this is the wrong bill to sort of 
suddenly get fiscal religion and go on to make a spectacle of because 
these are capital expenditures that are going to benefit our country 
for an extended period of time, and as business owners, farm owners, 
homeowners know, the proper reason to go into debt is for capital 
expenditures for long-term improvements. If you are going to be 
fiscally prudent, then you pay cash for current consumption.
  We have it backward. We are creating enormous deficits based on 
current consumption, and then when we get to a bill where we should 
legitimately be incurring debt, if we need to, for long-term capital 
expenditures, we are going in the other direction--for politics, for 
reelection politics, not for the public interest. We know that. I bet 
the Speaker knows that. Certainly the members in his caucus know that.

  We need to stand up and speak out and insist that our voices be 
heard, that our proffer of responsibilities in this body on behalf of 
the people of our States be exercised. Our leader and the House leader 
should take this bill to conference and protect all the projects that 
are of concern to myself and members of my caucus--as the projects of 
importance to the members of the majority caucus will be, I am sure, 
protected, as they should be, just as is the tradition in the House. 
Writing those into the actual House bill will, I am told, ensure they 
will be protected, honored, for both the Republican and Democratic 
Members. That is the way the system has worked, I am told, in the past.
  Frankly, I think we should dispense with all of those earmarked 
projects which benefit some States far more than others--more than my 
State--because of the way the memberships on committees and seniority 
falls, but that is a discussion for another day.
  Given that is the system we have, I certainly understand why I and my 
colleagues on this side of the aisle need to and should have the right 
to assurances that our projects are going to be treated as they have 
been in the past and not just discarded in the committee, as so many of 
our amendments and proposals have been in other legislation earlier 
this year and last year.
  But that is something that can readily be resolved. That is a very 
minor consideration compared to what, I am told, is the real obstacle 
right now, and that is to get the leadership of the Senate and the 
House to be willing to take a bill to the President that we say is the 
right thing to do. We know what that is. It is what our Senate bill 
provided overall and for our respective States. It is a fiscally 
responsible bill because it uses every dollar in the highway trust fund 
over the next 6 years--not more than that, not less than that. We know 
our States need those expenditures.
  Let the President veto the bill if that is his decision. Then let's 
override it here and in the House and then it becomes law. Then those 
475,000 Americans who are either drawing unemployment benefits--or many 
of them, I believe, have probably exhausted their unemployment 
benefits; just this week we found the Senate unwilling to provide an 
extension of those benefits--can go back to work in construction jobs 
and related jobs.
  This bill more than anything we have done in tax adjustments will put 
Americans to work--now, this summer, right away--when they need work. 
We can't turn our back on that opportunity and that responsibility. 
Let's make the system work the way it is supposed to work. Let's pass 
this bill. Let's get it to the White House. Let's take it back and do 
what is necessary to make it law.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). The time of the Senator has 
expired. The Senator from Rhode Island.

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