[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 62 (Thursday, May 12, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H3240]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                VETOING AMERICA'S TRANSPORTATION FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, finally, blatantly, 18\1/2\ 
months after the expiration of the Surface Transportation Act which 
provides crucial funding for all of the road, bridge, highway mass 
transit and related work of the Federal Government, spending our gas 
taxes which are collected day in and day out and being underspent by 
this administration, the Senate acted to increase funding.
  Strangely, this is the one bill, the only place that George Bush in 
over 5 years in office has said he is going to veto a bill if it spends 
more money. Now, he will not do that for agriculture subsidies to pay 
big corporate farms not to pay things. He wanted to cut their 
subsidies, but the Republicans have refused to do it, and he is not 
threatening to veto that bill.
  He is not threatening to veto bills that are doing wasteful things 
like the Star Wars Project in Alaska that does not work, has not met a 
single parameter of its goal. He cannot threaten vetoes there. But when 
it is spending our gas tax money, this is the only bill where we are in 
the borrowing money. We are borrowing $1.3 million a minute to run the 
Federal Government under the Bush budget, but we do not have to borrow 
money to have a robust highway bill. We just need to spend the taxes we 
are all paying every time we tank up our car or truck.
  This is money that will put people to work. This is money that will 
maintain and improve our crumbling infrastructure. It will help 
mitigate congestion, people sitting in traffic, idling, wasting gas, 
wasting their time. It could better fund mass transit, alternate 
transportation, all these things; but somehow the President has drawn 
the line in the sand.
  He said last year, not a penny over $256 billion. He wants to 
underspend the trust fund so he can borrow that money to pay for tax 
cuts for rich people. Plain and simple. That is what he wants to do 
with our gas tax money.
  We pay money at the pump to improve our roads, bridges, and highways. 
We have to pay it right there at the pump. He wants to underspend that 
trust fund, and then he wants to take and divert that money over here 
to give rich people tax cuts. Now, is that a better way to stimulate 
the economy of the United States, to improve the business climate, to 
help the traveling public?
  I do not think so. It might help them pay for their corporate jets, 
but it is not going to help the rest of us who are down there mired in 
traffic.
  So the Senate voted yesterday 76 to 22 to increase funding 
substantially above the levels the President says he will veto. Well, 
an override of a veto is 66 votes in the United States Senate. Maybe 
this will send a message that we have been trying to send to the White 
House for 2 years.
  There is a huge bipartisan coalition, Republican and Democrat in the 
House and the Senate, who want to invest in our roads, bridges, 
highways, mass transit, alternative transportation, put Americans to 
work, help Americans get to work, and help improve the efficiency of 
our business. Hopefully, they will change their tone down at the White 
House and stop threatening to veto needed investment.
  The President's own Department of Transportation, the people he 
politically appointed and controls, says this bill should be $376 
billion. And the President says not a penny over 256. Now he has come 
up a little bit to the House level of 284, but that is not adequate to 
meet the needs of the system. And the Senate wants to spend more of our 
gas tax dollars on what they were collected for, projects to rebuild 
and improve the efficiency of the Nation's infrastructure.
  So I take this as a very positive move. Hopefully, the Republican 
leadership can move with dispatch to have a conference committee and 
get a bill done by May 31. That is when the fifth extension of the 
long-expired highway bill expires. Because if we do not, hundreds of 
projects across America will not get built this summer, those jobs will 
not be created, those bottlenecks will not be solved, those bridges 
will not be repaired, the traveling public will be impaired.
  The White House will be happy with that because then they get to take 
more money, divert it from the gas tax, and spend it on more tax cuts 
for rich people. But I do not think the rest of America will be amused 
by that. So I am hoping the American public will demand that Congress 
act quickly to resolve the differences between the House and the Senate 
and get a bill now 18 months overdue to the President's desk. And if he 
chooses to veto it, then pressure the Congress to override that ill-
intentioned veto.
  Let him veto something wasteful. Let him veto something that we are 
borrowing money to pay for, but do not veto a paid-for highway bill 
with vital investment in America's transportation future.

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