[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 40 (Tuesday, March 19, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H1573]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       SAVING OUR INFRASTRUCTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, as I speak here on the floor, the American 
Society of Civil Engineers is releasing a report card for America's 
infrastructure.
  The gentleman who spoke before me talked about the legacy that we 
leave to our country and about growth in the Nation. Well, this is an 
incredible legacy we're leaving and creating, which is an unbelievable 
deficit in our Nation's infrastructure. We've gone from No. 1 in the 
world post-World War II with the Eisenhower era, the national 
interstate program, to No. 26 in the world. We are spending less of our 
gross domestic product on infrastructure investment than many Third 
World countries. It's not only an embarrassment; it is hurting our 
economy and our growth.
  Now, if your kid came home and said, Hey, Dad, guess what? I got my 
report card. Here it is. Good news. Good news. Oh, it's good news. I 
went up to a D-plus. A D-plus--that's where America's infrastructure 
is.
  We have a projected deficit over the next 7 years of about $1.6 
trillion. That's an unbelievable, unimaginable number, $1.6 trillion. 
That's as much money as the war in Iraq cost us, an unnecessary and 
wasteful war. We can't afford to invest in our infrastructure, but 
we're rebuilding the infrastructure in Afghanistan. There's something 
wrong with this picture.
  According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, if we don't 
address this investment gap in all of our infrastructure, by 2020 the 
economy will lose $1 trillion in business sales, 3.5 million jobs will 
be lost or foregone and there will be $3.1 trillion less in gross 
domestic product. If we invested $1.6 trillion, we would get 100 
percent return on our investment and 3.5 million more jobs. Not bad, 
but the people on that side of the aisle don't believe in rebuilding 
America's infrastructure. They have some wacko theory here of what they 
call ``devolution.'' We shouldn't have a national transportation 
policy, no. It should be done by the 50 States. Well, we already tried 
that. It didn't work too well. That's when Dwight David Eisenhower said 
we needed an national interstate system, and we built it. Now it's 
falling apart.
  There are 140,000 bridges that need substantial repair or replacement 
and 40 percent of the pavement on the National Highway System is at the 
point where there are potholes big enough to put your car in. Maybe if 
the White House limousine falls in one of those holes we'll get a 
little more action down there in terms of funding our infrastructure. 
I've been trying to get them to take a position on this.
  We are looking at something even more extraordinary. In 2015--we've 
been paying for infrastructure out of a trust fund. It hasn't added to 
the deficit. But it raises taxes. Oh, my God. We can't have taxes for 
something like that, can we? Not on that side of aisle.
  Well, if we don't do something about it, the trust fund is going to 
drop below zero sometime in 2014, which means we are not going to 
invest any more in our National Transportation System. For one year 
we'll go from $50 billion, which is not sufficient to even deal with 
the deterioration, let alone build out a better, more efficient 21st 
century infrastructure, to $7 billion. That's hundreds of thousands of 
jobs gone. That's an acceleration in the deterioration of the system.
  We're going to have to talk about revenues. It's the only way to 
solve that problem, unless you want to devolve it to the 50 States and 
have the States build interstates that don't match up or maybe they 
won't build the interstates at all. We don't know what kind of plan is 
coming from that side of the aisle. But I do know that we need to make 
these investments. As I already pointed out, we can get a 100 percent 
rate of return.
  It's pretty simple. We would just index the existing gas tax, which 
hasn't changed since 1993. Yeah, we're paying nearly 4 bucks a gallon. 
It will be 5 bucks a gallon by Memorial Day. And the money is going 
into the coffers of ExxonMobil and the other big oil companies. It 
isn't going to repair infrastructure.
  We haven't raised that tax in 20 years. If we just indexed it to 
construction cost inflation and indexed it to fleet fuel economy, we 
could issue bonds paid off by that increment on the gas tax. It would 
be about a penny a year a gallon. When I was driving to work one day 
and they were changing the cards up there, they were raising it a 
nickel a gallon just as I drove by. At a penny a gallon, I think most 
Americans would be willing to pay for that if they knew it was going to 
save 3.5 or create 3.5 million jobs and put this country back on track 
and get rid of some of the delays and the congestion and the detours 
and all the other problems we have.
  So let's pay attention to this scorecard, to this report card. If 
your kid came home with a card like this, you'd do something about it. 
Congress better do something about it.

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