[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 15, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H731]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. The fancy new software at use in our congressional 
offices gives us the ability to see all of the constituent contacts, 
all of their questions, complaints, and concerns by category.
  I wonder if anyone in Congress has received any complaints about the 
Safe Routes to School program. I'll bet not. So why is the Republican 
transportation bill eliminating Safe Routes to School, creating an 
``unsafe route to school''?
  This is a wildly popular program, costing a fraction of a percent of 
the transportation budget, and it has had a huge impact nationally on 
our children because it deals with real consequences for them.

                              {time}  1020

  A generation ago, 40 or 50 percent of children were able to get to 
school on their own. Now only 13 percent can. It's no wonder that 
childhood obesity has exploded over the same period of time, with one 
in three of our children now overweight or obese or seriously at risk. 
Asthma has gone up for children 74 percent over the last 5 years. There 
are real consequences for accidents. There were 23,000 5- to 15-year-
olds injured, and more than 250 kids killed walking or biking in 2009.
  Getting our children to school in the morning represents 10 to 14 
percent of the entire American morning commute, 6.5 billion trips 
stretching 30 billion miles. Doesn't it make sense to do something 
about the congestion, the injuries, deaths, and the obesity? 
Absolutely.
  Twenty years ago, as Portland's commissioner of public works, I 
started a program in my city to help teach kids how to get to school 
safely and to improve road and sidewalk conditions. Ten years ago, we 
started a national program, Safe Routes to School. Schools with these 
programs show a 20 percent to 200 percent increase in the number of 
kids walking or biking. According to a recent California study, these 
students are healthier, they do better in school, and there is a 49 
percent decrease in accident rates.
  So why are my Republican friends advancing a transportation bill 
attacking Safe Routes to School, stripping it out, making it an unsafe 
route to school? Well, it's a fitting metaphor for perhaps the worst 
transportation bill in history. I think that may be one of the reasons 
they were afraid to even have a single hearing on the package that's 
coming to the floor this week.
  They attacked the foundation of 20 years of balanced transportation 
reform. It shatters the 30-year partnership between transit and road 
interests that gave 80 percent to roads and 20 percent to a transit 
account, brokered by Ronald Reagan's administration. It undercuts the 
role of local governments and metropolitan areas to shape and control 
their own destiny, leaving them to the tender mercy of bureaucrats in 
their State capitals.
  But it's not just Safe Routes to School. They attack high-speed rail, 
bicycles, Amtrak. They attack the basic environmental and public 
participation protections that have been gutted that actually have been 
very important to make sure that we have good projects that aren't held 
up politically or in court.
  Sadly, I am very disappointed. I have worked for years on a coalition 
of broad interests across the spectrum of highway, professional, 
environmental, labor, business groups toward a good transportation bill 
and a coalition that can work together for the badly needed 
transportation resources. This Republican bill splits away valuable 
allies and will make it almost impossible to get the resources we need 
in the future. And, of course, their bill is $5 billion short for 
highways after taking all of these resources and stuffing them into the 
Highway Account.
  This is, simply, the worst highway bill ever. It is the first we've 
seen that has not been at least a semblance of bipartisanship and is 
something that's never been considered in committee. Too timid to do 
the job, it recklessly abandons the trust fund principle, raising the 
ire of budget hawks for abandoning ``user pay''. It guts the most 
popular programs that help stretch dollars and improve communities. 
And, as I say, it shatters the coalition that we need to deal with the 
future resources.
  Mercifully, this theological statement, sloppy, incomplete, and ill-
considered has no chance of ever being enacted into law; but it's 
important that the House reject it. There is no more powerful symbol of 
how bankrupt this proposal is than eliminating the wildly popular and 
effective Safe Routes to School. If for no other reason, reject this 
bill for our children.

                          ____________________