[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 47 (Wednesday, March 21, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H1433]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. This is a photograph from 1956, before we had a national 
transportation policy in the United States of America; and if the 
Republicans are successful with their budget and with their vision, 
this will be the future for the United States of America.
  There are a substantial number of Republicans on that side who have 
drunk the Kool Aid of a guy named Grover Norquist, who says that he 
wants government so small, he can strangle it in the bathtub, and that 
we should devolve--devolve--this is interesting--not evolve--devolve 
transportation to the States. That's right. Our national transportation 
policy will be set by the 50 different States.
  Well, this is 1956, before we had a national transportation policy. 
This is the brand spanking new Kansas Turnpike. Isn't that beautiful. 
Well, look where it ends--in a farmer's field in Oklahoma because 
Oklahoma chose not to build its section, which they had promised to 
build. That's the way things used to be, and that's the way they want 
things to be again.
  We're now on the precipice of basically walking away from investing 
in our Nation's infrastructure. There are 150,000 bridges that need 
replacement or repair in the national system; 40 percent of the 
pavement needs total replacement, not just an overlay. We have a $70 
billion backlog in our 19th- and 20th-century transportation systems in 
our major urban areas, in our transit. And that's not even talking 
about building an efficient 21st-century transportation system to 
deliver people and goods more efficiently.
  And what's their proposal? A 31 percent cut in an already inadequate 
budget or maybe no money at all. Actually, it's a bit odd. Mr. Ryan's 
budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would not be 
enough to fund the uncontrollable outlays, i.e., projects already under 
way by the States for which the Federal Government has contracted to 
reimburse at the end of the construction of these projects. His budget 
wouldn't even meet that number. And in terms of authorizing the bill, 
they decided for the first time in history to make this a partisan 
issue.
  Dwight David Eisenhower, a Republican President, he came up with the 
idea of a national transportation network. Ronald Reagan put transit 
into the highway trust fund. They want to take out Ronald Reagan's step 
of putting transit in the highway trust fund as an interim step before 
they do away with the program altogether. That's pretty extraordinary 
stuff. Their vision is that we will go back to this state of affairs in 
America. We cannot afford that.
  Next week or the week after, the temporary highway funding expires. 
The Senate has passed a bipartisan bill by an overwhelming majority. 
The Republican leadership has threatened that their right-wing 
devolutionists will do away with Federal transportation by saying, We 
might make you vote on that Senate bill. That passes for a threat in 
the Republican Caucus. We might make you vote on a good bill that would 
continue the current system with some improvements for a couple of 
years--that's what passes for a threat--unless you vote for our crazy 
H.R. 7, which does away with transit funding and basically dismantles 
the program over a longer term, or the Ryan budget, which would 
immediately end the program next year.
  But they won't let us vote on that because they know that a bunch of 
Democrats--just like in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans 
came together with an overwhelming majority and passed a transportation 
bill, they know that would happen here. So they got 80 or so 
ultraright-wingers who wouldn't vote for it. Big deal. I could match 
that with 150 Democrats, and we could have a bipartisan bill next week, 
putting millions of Americans back to work, rebuilding the crumbling 
infrastructure in this country. But instead, they want to devolve us 
back to the future.
  Smaller government. Smaller government. Yes, that's great, guys. A 
transportation policy for the United States of America, competing in a 
world economy, set by the 50 States without funding. What a great 
vision.

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